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Planes Trains & Automobiles

By Matt Chaban 1/11 3:35pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Welcome to the Adirondacks Transit Authority.

L.A. Beat New York to Congestion Pricing and Andrew Cuomo Could Care Less

How did L.A. wind up taking our transportation lunch money? New Yorkers were so busy bullying each other, we didn’t even notice when they took it and beat us to the mass transit punch.

The Architect’s Newspaper had an interesting story earlier this week pointing out how back in November, Los Angeles launched its own congestion pricing system to speed traffic on some of its jammed, anything-but-free freeways, and it has been enjoying impressive results. This was, of course, “made possible by political gridlock in the New York State Assembly over congestion pricing,” as the paper points out. All the while, the MTA has been hemorrhaging cash, leading to reduced service (later restored through cuts elsewhere) and all those fare hikes.

After Albany failed to pass the congestion pricing measure, a portion of the hundreds of millions in federal funds that had been set aside to start our program were given over to L.A. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/14/12 3:10pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Take me to your subway. (MTA)

That MetroCard Is Going to Cost $2.50, But at Least It Comes With a Free Audiobook

It now looks almost certain that the Metrocard is going up to $2.50 next week, with monthlies costing $112, up from $104, at least that is what MTA chief Joe Lhota is recommending in a letter he sent to the board yesterday [PDF]. But at least we will be getting a little something for that extra coin—free audiobooks.

The MTA announced today that it is continuing its front-of-Metrocard ad campaign, which kicked off in October with Metrocards bearing Gap ads on them. Those doubled as 15 percent-off coupons heralding the arrival of the budget clothier’s new Herald Square flagship. Now, Audible will be taking up some prime MTA real estate with Metrocard ads, including a code for a free audiobook. Read More

By Kit Dillon 12/10/12 4:13pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

2012-12-10 12.05.17

City Council Tackles Our Last Existential Quandary: Countdown Clocks for Bus Stops

The bus stop is a lonely place, made lonelier without the reassurances of time. Like Estragon said, “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” Much better to wait underground for the subway where your time is allotted to you by little digital clocks hanging from the ceiling.  No more leaning out and staring into the endlessness of a dark tunnel looking for light. Your train is 4 minutes away, at least on those lines fortunate enough to have the timers.

New York City is not a place for waiting. We’re terrible at it, and the City Council knows it. Today, joined by transit advocates and riders, a group of council members introduced a resolution calling on city agencies to install “bus clocks” in all of the 3,300 shelters across the city. Clocks that would display real-time bus arrival information, not simply those flimsy timetables many bus poles now unreliably, even flagrantly, post. It’s a move that will finally see the city catching up with such other metropolitan innovators as Albany, Syracuse, and Champaign, Ill. They’ve even got an online version in Boston—Boston! Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/04/12 12:12pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Blue steel! (MTA)

Male Model Joe Lhota Sports an H Train Hoody to Support Rockaways Recovery

The “I Survived the Frankenstorm” shirts had already hit street corners and Etsy shops within days of the hurricane battering New York. But here’s some Sandy swag that actually goes toward a good cause. The MTA has created a limited edition line of H train memorabilia, including T-shirts, hoodies, pins and magnets, and all proceeds go to the Graybeards, a Rockaways charity that has been helping out with the superstorm recovery. And who better to model the new line than MTA chief Joe Lhota, hero of the storm. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/20/12 1:40pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Zoom, zoom.

Staten Island Gets Ferried Away: City Preparing New Shuttle Service for Hard-Hit South Shore

One of the more unusual sides of the city’s response to Superstorm Sandy has been the ingenuity of the transportation and planning wonks that help us get around this giant metropolis. It is not only the speed with which the MTA recovered, but also what it and the city’s Department of Transportation did in between. Creating bus bridges to replace flooded subways, launching new ferry lines, creating special subway shuttles.

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced yet another innovation, a second ferry for Staten Island. The Rockaways already has one, and now the city is looking for an operator to serve the hardest-hit sections of Staten Island’s south shore. With widespread destruction, many locals’ lives have been interrupted, forcing them to leave behind their homes and cars. The new ferry service is seen as a lifeline between Great Kills and Manhattan, for those struggling to get to work and beyond. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/19/12 4:16pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Video

The Rockaways, on a roll again. (MTA/Flickr)

The New, Free H-Train Shuttle Is Now Up and Running in the Rockaways

Among the indignities visited on the Rockaways by Hurricane Sandy was the destruction of its sole subway route, the A train. As The Observer first reported, this was not merely a case of flooding, but the very foundations of the Broad Channel crossing washing away, creating months, or longer, of reconstruction work for the MTA.

Still, the agency took the unusual step of trucking a bunch of subway cars out to the Rockaways so it could at least run shuttle service along the peninsula, with a bus in Far Rockaway then ferrying riders to the A train in Howard Beach. The service will be up and running as of 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, and Governor Cuomo even announced that it would be free until regular subway service is restored. Free subway service—finally some good news for the Rockaways. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/15/12 8:11am

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Video

Screen Shot 2012-11-15 at 11.23.45 AM

Inside the Flooded Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and a New Genre of Ruin Porn

Last night, the MTA posted a video of the cleanup effort going on inside the Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which had reopened just the day before after a monstrous flood.

It is a burgeoning genre, after the MTA gave the L train tubes the same treatment—not every effort got a star turn, just the slow ones, as though to say, “Look, we’re workin’ on it.” That and the jaw-dropping ones, like flooding inside the (still-closed) South Ferry subway station (and the cleanup). Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/13/12 4:34pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

5 Photos

Traffic Returns to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel

The Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel Just Reopened—And Already There’s Traffic

Governor Cuomo came to the mouth of the Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel less than an hour ago with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and MTA chief Joe Lhota to announce that one tube of the formerly flooded tunnel would be opening to traffic at 4 o’clock today. Within minutes of his entourage departing,  the cars did indeed begin flowing in. Town cars, Range Rovers, some foreign and domestic sedans, at least two Cadillacs and, of course, numerous cabs.

It was a regular stream of New York City wheels. And as so often happens when such vehicles tend to cluster, there was a back-up. Yes, traffic. Perhaps life is getting back to normal.

“In many ways, for me, this site a metaphor for the entire storm,” Governor Cuomo said, from the awesome power of Mother Nature that first hit the city during Hurricane Sandy to the awesome rebuilding effort the MTA and others undertook. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/09/12 12:19pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

21 Photos

The Great Rockway Subway Shuttle Shuffle

Ferry Service Returns to the Rockaways to Shuttle the Stranded, Along With Flying Subway Cars

Update 4:56 p.m.:Governor Cuomo just announced at an afternoon press conference that the A train shuttle in the Rockaways should be up and running by Sunday. He also announced that the N train along the Sea Line, between 59th Street in Sunset Park and Coney Island, resumed service today.

“The damage to the A line in Jamaica Bay is absolutely unprecedented, and so is the MTA’s response,” MTA Chairman and CEO Joe Lhota said. “Restoring the entire A train will take months, but the MTA is committed to doing it and to providing alternatives to our customers in the meantime.”

Original post: The Rockaways have been devastated by Hurricane Sandy, and that is not just the homes, but the infrastructure, the very fabric of the peninsula. But the city and the MTA have been working nonstop to return life to normal, and that goes for mass transit as well.

The MTA has been working all week to truck subway cars out to the Rockaways from a trestle in Brooklyn so that a shuttle service might be set up between Beach 116th Street and Mott Avenue/Far Rockaway. “We’re going to do what we can to get the Rockaways back to normal,” MTA chief Joe Lhota told reporters over the weekend, when the MTA was putting together its shuttle plan.

The shuttle became a necessity after Hurricane Sandy caused severe damage to the Broad Channel crossing, all but destroying the A train connection between Howard Beach and the Rockaways. The shuttle will help subway riders commute within the Rockaways, but they will still be forced to take a shuttle bus in Far Rockaway to connect to the A train in Queens to get into other parts of the city.

A better option for commuters might be a new ferry service the Bloomberg administration is launching. Read More