Well here’s something you don’t see every day. According to the Albany Times Union, “New York Gov. David Paterson has signed a bill cracking the code of silence at public authorities that run New York City's mass transit system, the state Thruway, and many other major services…The newest statute makes it illegal for a public authority to prevent employees from disclosing anything about their work, except in certain cases when the information is kept confidential by law.” According to Richard Brodsky “the public authorities long operated without proper scrutiny even though they collectively handle billions of dollars.” So what is it that they didn’t know over the past 20 years? That if you make some people better off by borrowing $billions today, other people are going to be worse off when it has to be paid back tomorrow?
As it happens, I have in my possession a spreadsheet that I obtained as an MTA employee, covered by the confidentiality rules I was under at a time – that you cannot publicly release information that you only knew because you were an employee. The rules were in the MTA policies, and I thought them reasonable at the time. The spreadsheet is a table of the age of the signal system for each stretch of track, along with past replacement projects. It shows which parts of the city will have their transit service collapse first, as the MTA’s resources shift to debt service as a result of past borrowing for ongoing normal replacement (maintenance not capital as far as I’m concerned), once ongoing normal replacement stops. So, Paterson and Brodsky, would it be ethical for me to attach that table (and some others) to this post under the new law? I know my fellow transit buffs would love to see it.
Perhaps the MTA could solve the ethical dilemma by releasing the table – based on its asset database – and others like it for other systems itself. After all, the table I have is only updated through 2004, when I because so disgusted with (among other things) the broad scale sellout of New York’s future by those cashing in during the present that I left the MTA to run as a protest candidate against the local state legislator. Then moved on to the private sector, where I feel much better.
Even better, in order to put information in the form the public could understand, perhaps the MTA could use the information to publish the map I recommended in this post two years ago.
“What I want is a new version of the New York City subway map. But instead of showing stations, dots on the map would show signal interlockings (places where the trains can switch tracks), with the size of the dot equal to the size of the interlocking measured by its number of switches. The color of those dots, and the colors of subway lines connecting them, would not be based on the Manhattan trunk route as it is on the actual subway route map. Instead, the dots would be based on the age of the interlocking signal system and the lines would be based on the age of the automatic signals, stops and stop cables (you don’t have to know what those are, because the MTA does).”
“For signal systems 0 to 19 years old, the color could be blue, as in blue chip. For those 20 to 39 years old, the color could be green, as in good to go. For those 40 to 59 years old the color could be yellow, for beware. New York City Transit estimates the useful life of its signal systems to be 50 years, but aside from the 1970s fiscal crisis it has been replacing its signal systems at a rate of a new system every 60 years. Because of that hiatus, some systems are much older. Those from 60 to 75 years old can be presented in red on the map. Some engineers say conventional signal systems can last 75 years before disaster. Those 75 years or older can be presented in (fade to) black.”
Remember when transit service nearly collapsed in the 1970s? At that time, none of the signal systems in use were more than 75 years old. How about today, after billions of dollars in financial debt have been added? What is deferred maintenance? A hidden, off the books debt like those in public employee retirement. Talk about billions of dollars without proper scrutiny! And we’re got plenty of on-the-books debts to go with them.
And by the way, just because the line you live on is blue or green, that doesn’t mean things will be fine until you cash in and move out. “On the route legend for the map, the route markers – for the F train, the 2 train, etc. – would take the color of the section of track it traverses that has the oldest signal system, because a problem anywhere along the line would be enough to wreck your ride to or from work.”
Similar maps could show the age and conditions of stations, power cables, you name it. The same kind of mapping could be used to show the age and conditions of the commuter rail lines. For vehicles, rail and bus lines could be colored based on the average age of those in service on the line, relative to their expected useful life. And, as I pointed out two year ago, colored icons could show the condition of different building components in schools, and colored streets could show the most recent repaving, age of the water and sewer mains, etc. Bridges could be colored by the date of most recent repainting. Lots of rust on many of them. The state road system and bridges upstate could be similar treatment.
And just in case some would use this as an excuse not to make the major investments New Yorkers have been promised – and voted to borrow money for – for decades, because the existing systems haven’t been maintained, ask yourself these questions.
How many high-paid executives working in Manhattan will choose to live on Long Island rather than New Jersey when East Side Access is not built and the new rail tunnel from New Jersey is built, and what will that mean for relative property values and Manhattan-linked firms looking for suburban office space?
What will life be like for residents of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx if the signals on the Lexington Avenue line (4,5,6) need to be replaced – with years of shutdowns and disruptions – if the BMT Broadway line extension (can we stop kidding ourselves and calling it the Second Avenue Subway) is not built to 125th Street first?
Where will New York City attract new, modern office space if the Flushing Line extension to the West Side, and New Haven and Hudson Line service is not extended to Penn Station? The latter is only possible after East Side Access is finished.
And what will Flushing Line service in Queens be like if as a result of diminished terminal capacity in Manhattan, with fewer trains able to run on the line instead of more as CBTC would have provided? (As I have heard from someone who knows someone who knows someone, who apparently is not in violation of confidentiality requirements under the new law).
By all means, let’s have an honest accounting of the future Generation Greed plans to leave us with, in time for MTA Capital program to be terminated. Is that the kind of formerly confidential information Mr. Paterson and Mr. Brodsky, who voted for all those debts, want released, and the MTA Board, which went along with it (that’s how you get on the MTA Board) probably doesn’t?
As I mentioned, I’m a longstanding transit buff, but I get around mostly by bicycle now. And advise others to do likewise. So what say you? Attach those spreadsheets? Or is the fact that I have written posts about the MTA using publicly available information from the agency and FTA bad enough?