Stopped by the Metropolitan Ave station and had to school the MTA's mass engagement posse about how the IBX is not going to work in the future when the current transit system is still a hot mess. Spoler alert: Eminent Domain is a major factor with this project
@NYCTSubway running on your trains is hella fun💯❤️. Hoping to be a Mta worker and get them keys gang💙😃 pic.twitter.com/YP7wNFxOjY
— Valaklikesmen (@valakryie) May 5, 2022
Reports of “subway surfing” have jumped by nearly 363% since 2020, according to MTA figures provided to THE CITY.
In the first five months of this year, there have been 449 reported incidents of people riding on top of or outside trains, MTA data shows — almost as many as the 461 in all of 2019.
That’s up from 97 for the same time period in 2020, when subway ridership plummeted by more than 90% during the peak of the pandemic and from 68 last year.
“We have hundreds of recorded incidents that this has occurred in our system in the last few months,” Richard Davey, president of New York City Transit, said Monday during an MTA committee meeting. “I am going to implore anyone who is watching this to tell your kids, to tell your friends: Do not do this.”
The MTA provided the numbers to THE CITY last week amid a string of recent high-profile subway surfing incidents, several of which have been posted to social media.
On Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was critically injured after police said he hit his head against an unknown object while riding atop a No. 7 train as it approached the 111th Street station in Queens.
“Oh my God,” gasped Maritza Santos, 44, whose 14-year-son, Eric Rivera, was killed in November 2019 after striking something as he rode on top of a No. 7 train near Queensboro Plaza. “I can’t believe they don’t learn unless they didn’t see what happened to Eric.
“I’m just shocked that kids are still doing this,” she told THE CITY.
Santos, who has three other sons, said she was pulling for the unidentified teenager, who police said was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center after suffering severe head trauma.
“I pray that he gets well,” she said. “I understand what his family is going through.”
In a graphic video obtained by THE CITY, the teen’s legs dangle over the side of the train car while he lays bloodied on top.
The voice of a woman on the platform can be heard saying in Spanish, “I’m sorry, but this had to happen so that they stop doing this.”
Former New York City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley has stepped down from her position as chairperson of the board of Friends of the QNS, a nonprofit organization that she founded to advocate for expanded commuter rail-based transit across the borough.
Crowley said her decision to step down was made in order to focus fully on her candidacy for New York State Senate District 17.
“It has been an honor to serve as the chair of Friends of the QNS,” Crowley said.
The “QNS” proposal was introduced by Crowley to improve transit within her former Council district. Specifically, the plan sought to revive the former Lower Montauk rail line, which stretches nine miles from Hunters Point in Long Island City, through central Queens neighborhoods including Middle Village, Glendale, and Ridgewood, to the Jamaica hub.
This portion of central Queens is commonly referred to as one of the City’s “transit deserts,” since no passenger rail currently serves many of these neighborhoods.
In a 2018 report from the Department of Transportation, it was confirmed that the defunct rail line could be converted to include passenger service at a fraction of the cost of other major expansion projects like Manhattan’s 2nd Avenue Subway.
The New York State Senate district seat that Crowley is currently running for would include a vast majority of the former Lower Montauk Line within its boundaries. It was recently created by state lawmakers following the 2020 Census and will include Glendale, Maspeth, Richmond Hill, Ridgewood, Woodhaven, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Ozone Park, and Greenpoint in Brooklyn within its boundaries.
But while Crowley is stepping down from her position as the board’s chair, she said she vows to continue to advocate not only for the QNS rail but for a greenway along the QNS line, if elected.
“Queens has been growing at a tremendous pace, especially Long Island City,” Crowley said. “For this borough to keep up with its growth, we need to provide better transit to our residents. It’s not ambitious, it’s common sense.”
This proposal to restore the former commuter rail is similar to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 14-mile IBX plan, which seeks to add a train line from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Woodside, Queens.
Both use existing, underused train rights-of-way, converting them to passenger service from strictly freight service.
Crowley also indicated that she would work to include a dedicated bike lane running parallel to QNS, because “an intolerable” number of bicycle accidents and fatalities have been occurring in recent years.
“If we want people to use alternative transportation, we want them to feel safe as they do so. A slightly revised QNS ‘rail and trail’ plan would help that goal,” Crowley said.
An underutilized 14-mile freight line would be converted into a new commuter “Interborough Express” service connecting neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens under a plan championed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.
The new transit service would run from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Jackson Heights Heights in Queens.
During her first state of the state address, Hochul ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to conduct an environmental review and identify the best transit option for the corridor — heavy rail, light rail or bus rapid transit.
“This historic project would improve transit service and job access for underserved communities in Brooklyn and Queens, serving a corridor that is currently home to 900,000 residents and 260,000 jobs, with expected growth of at least 41,000 people and 15,000 jobs in the next 25 years,” Hochul said.
“Stronger rapid transit in Brooklyn and Queens is long overdue.”
The city will deploy 250 extra police officers to the subways, bringing the number of cops patrolling the system to the highest level in the NYPD Transit Bureau’s 26-year history, Mayor de Blasio said Monday.
With the new increase, the mayor said there’ll be about 3,250 NYPD transit cops. That figure also includes desk cops or supervisors who aren’t in the field, an NYPD spokesman noted.
The 250 additional cops won’t work full eight-hour shifts on subway patrol. They’ll walk the system for a couple hours during the morning and evening rush, earning overtime on top of their regular shifts in some cases, the police spokesman said.
The expansion comes as 24/7 subway service resumed Monday for the first time since May 6, 2020, when Gov. Cuomo ordered the system closed to passengers overnight to remove homeless riders. Its announcement also follows a series of violent incidents, including a Friday rampage in which five straphangers were assaulted during a horrifying stabbing spree.
“Anyone who commits an offense on the subways will be found, will be prosecuted, will be held accountable,” de Blasio said at a press conference, adding: “We’re going to take officers and put them in right places in the subways at the right time, particularly at peak times of ridership.”
New York City’s subway will begin rolling all night again and capacity restrictions for most types of businesses will end statewide in mid-May as COVID-19 infection rates continues to decline, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.
City subway service will return to 24-hour operation on May 17 after being closed for cleaning during overnight hours since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the Democratic governor said.
Capacity restrictions on businesses — including restaurants, offices, beauty salons, gyms — will be lifted in New York and its neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut on May 19, Cuomo said.
Businesses in New York will still be required to operate in a way that guarantees that unvaccinated people can keep 6 feet of social distancing space, even after the occupancy limits go away, the governor said.
New York City’s subways, famous for all-night operation, were shut down between 1 to 5 a.m. on April 30, 2020, so trains and stations could be disinfected. The change was also intended to make it easier to remove homeless people from trains where many had been spending the night. The overnight closure was scaled back to 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. in February.
On Sunday, the first car of a J train completely overshot the elevated station.
It was the second J train to do so that day.
It’s very serious," Aaron Morrison, a train operator and union representative. "And for it to have it happen twice in a day with that equipment, it’s not uncommon."Morrison has driven every type of subway car on the MTA's lettered lines, including its latest model, the R179s, which have run on the A, C, and J lines for two years.
"The train has a serious braking issue," Morrison said. "Even on dry rail, on a sunny day, depending on the geography of the station that train can go out of the station at any time."
It was raining Sunday when the operator of a train heading toward Manhattan applied the brakes, entering the 121st Street station in Richmond Hill.
The train skidded on the rails, stopping only after the first car and half of the second shot past the platform.
A half hour earlier, a J train heading in the opposite direction skidded after the operator braked entering the 111th Street stop.
The MTA says both trains were inspected and no defects were found. It blames the operators.
"Station overruns happen on all car classes and are usually the result of operator input and any train operators with concerns should raise them immediately," MTA spokesman Shams Tarek said.
But Morrison says the R-179s are so troublesome, operators try to avoid them when choosing assignments.
“You want to feel the train grabbing the brake, you want to feel the train slowing down, and commonly with that equipment sometimes you don’t feel it right away and there’s a delay," Morrison said. "And if there’s inclement weather, forget about it.”
"They have a troubled history," transit advocate Andrew Albert said.
Albert has watched the R179's troubled history unfold from his seat on the MTA board.
The cars were delivered late from manufacturer and have had welding problems and door malfunctions. One time, two train cars separated. The fleet has been pulled from service twice.
The cars have a worse performance record than some models built more than 30 years ago.
MTA chairman and CEO Pat Foye said trains will run daily from 4 a.m. to 2 a.m., then close for two hours for cleaning.
In an unprecedented move last May, subway service was shut down nightly between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. to allow transit workers to clean and disinfect trains as the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed the city and state.
Now, nearly a year later and as the surge in the number of cases and hospitalization has slowed, Cuomo said the state-run agency was prepared to reopen service.
A gruesome discovery by transit workers last week — an arm inside a subway tunnel — underscored a troubling trend: a growing number of people ending up on the tracks.
MTA statistics obtained by THE CITY show at least 720 instances of a “person on the roadbed” this year — including one Sunday morning in which police said a man survived after being shoved onto the tracks at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
That’s nearly as many as the 781 cases in all of 2019 and almost 200 more than five years ago — despite a steep pandemic-driven decline in ridership and the suspension of overnight passenger service.
Some transit workers and homeless advocates believe the overnight shutdown could be helping driving the roadbed incidents.
“When the system shuts down, [homeless New Yorkers] need someplace to go,” Eddie Muniz, a subway conductor, told THE CITY. “They can’t stay on the platforms, they can’t stay on the trains, so they go into the tunnels.”
In addition, the MTA has recorded more than 180 collisions between trains and people this year — creeping past the 182 incidents in all of 2015.
Sarah Feinberg, interim president of New York City Transit, said the figures point to problems that extend beyond the subway system.
“Sadly, these numbers continue to point to the mental health and housing crises we are experiencing in this city,” Feinberg told THE CITY.
The grim figures follow a week in which an E train fatally struck a 54-year-old man Friday inside a tunnel near the Woodhaven Boulevard station on the Queen Boulevard line. Meanwhile, a 40-year-old woman survived being pushed onto the tracks and passed over by two cars of a No. 5 train at 14th Street-Union Square during the Thursday morning rush.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday refused to back down from his $2 billion plans for an AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport — even while admitting the Big Apple’s transit system is facing an unprecedented financial crisis.
Cuomo insisted that the widely panned scheme was still “essential” for New York City, even as the Port Authority was forced to ax jobs and freeze other investments amid a coronavirus-induced downturn in travelers.
“It’ll be the single greatest economic boost that has been done in generations,” the governor insisted at a press briefing Sunday as he was challenged about sticking with the expensive project despite the cash crunch.
During the peak of the pandemic last spring, MTA buses became the workhorse of the transit system, shuttling more daily riders than the subway for the first time in decades.
Even after fare collection resumed in late August, the ridership decline on buses never fell nearly as steep as subway use.
But when the MTA unveiled its proposed “Doomsday” cuts Wednesday — potentially slashing service by 40% by next May and eliminating more than 9,000 jobs — bus workers were set to absorb close to two-thirds of the positions lost.
Riders who rely on buses, meanwhile, were left wondering how they’d get around a city still slowed by COVID-19.
“Believe me, it’s going to be ugly,” said Michelle Singleton, 55, a nurse from Harlem who, prior to the pandemic, commuted on the M11. “That’s why I won’t be riding the bus any more.”
At the agency’s monthly board meeting, MTA officials presented worst-case scenarios should the agency be unable to secure $12 billion in emergency federal funding to help close the enormous deficits created by the pandemic.
Without a bailout, the MTA faces a slew of unappetizing prospects — including higher-than-projected fare and toll increases, the elimination of seven-day and 30-day unlimited MetroCards and significant cuts to subway, bus and commuter rail frequency.
“We know that any reduction in service will hurt the city and the region, including customers who need us most,” Patrick Foye, the MTA chairperson said at the meeting. “But without the certainty of substantial federal dollars, there is no recourse.”
For buses, that could mean the elimination of entire lines, a slowdown on long-planned route redesigns in each borough, even the loss of a next-bus texting service and on-board WiFi.
Transit fares in New York will go up next spring — and the MTA is considering eliminating unlimited ride MetroCards as a part of the hike.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board on Wednesday voted to seek fare hikes that boost passenger revenue by 4%. Over the next two months, transit officials will review a slate of proposals to meet that target.
One idea is to keep the base subway and bus fare at $2.75 while eliminating the seven- and 30-day unlimited ride passes.
Another is to raise the base fare to $2.85. More options on the table include increasing the surcharge for new MetroCards from $1 to $3 and no longer allowing coin payments on buses.
