Subway trains move slower than treacle if they move at all. World War II-era signals will take 20 years to modernize. Stations are so rotted that recent heavy rain drenched straphangers and made rats on the tracks swim for their lives.
With advanced decay that leaves 5.8 million daily riders dreading their trips, New York City Transit Authority President Andy Byford has presented a bold new plan: “Group Station Managers” who will look after incidentals such as platform garbage and broken clocks.
“Broken windows” policing helped to curb crime. While a “broken clocks” strategy won’t catch any criminals, it might make the daily subway ordeal a teeny bit less odious — but only if the new management team is given the tools to get anything done.
Each station-group manager will have a small team of workers to focus on cleanliness and maintenance. They’ll also “coordinate and follow through” with painters, electricians, plumbers, customer-service personnel, countdown clock specialists, MetroCard machine technicians, elevator and escalator repair personnel, cellular and WiFi service providers and the NYPD, the MTA says.
A team of 23 managers will each be responsible for up to 25 stations — a big improvement over an earlier, ineffectual system where each had to handle 100 stations with little or no authority at any of them. An even older program that posted individual station managers’ names and photos, some of which can still be seen, “was discontinued long ago,” said the new plan’s director, Rachelle Glazier.
We’ll see whether the new managers can cut through the system’s Gordian-knot tangle of bureaucratic inertia, interdepartmental conflict and iron-clad union rules just to replace an overflowing garbage can. They won’t have any clout at all over infernally confusing “service advisory” posters. What does it mean that “A runs on the F line” while, simultaneously, “F runs on the A line?”
And the worst problem is beyond a new management program’s ability to fix: the inundation of often insane and/or incontinent “homeless” who make large parts of many stations off-limits to everyone else.
Byford’s task was easier in cities where he previously worked. Toronto’s eensy subway has just 75 stations and 48 track miles. London’s vaunted Underground has 272 stations and 250 track miles. Both systems mostly shut down overnight when Byford worked at them.
New York’s 24-hour system, on the other hand, has 472 stations and 675 track miles. Byford’s learning it’s a tough nut to crack — underfunded, miserably managed in the past and a hostage to the bitter rivalry between Gov. Andrew (“car guy”) Cuomo and Mayor Bill (“it isn’t my job”) de Blasio.
It’s not impossible that small improvements implemented by the new managers might pave the way to bigger ones. Just maybe, cleaner platforms will convey the sense — as useless, “honest” delay announcements do not — that the MTA is in touch with riders and cares about them. Just maybe, riders will think twice about throwing garbage on the tracks, a problem that caused 470 fires last year and delayed thousands of trains.
Things are so awful generally that it can’t hurt to try. Anything that arrests, even slightly, the hemorrhage of public trust in the system is worth a shot.
Glazier says the program’s underway but it might take up to 30 days to post names and e-mail addresses for managers in all the stations. But, “you’re going to start to see small improvements in the next few weeks,” she promised.
I’ll be watching the clocks.
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