Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Construction, it seems, is indeed under way for the extension of the No. 7 line, the cornerstone of the Bloomberg administration’s planned development of the far West Side.

The MTA’s capital construction page shows an update for November with pictures from below, where the agency is hollowing out the cavern for the station and making way for the eventual launch of a tunnel-boring machine, which will slowly dig its way along the 1.5-mile route.  read more »

It was a rough two hours for MTA board commissioners this morning: tears and tongue lashings in public testimony followed a budget presentation that confirmed all of their worst fears.

“I think I speak for all the board members when I say, ‘Wow,’” said Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger after hearing the full slate of proposed cuts.

Without specifying the amount of a fare hike for New York City transit—besides a jump in express bus fare from $5 to $7.50—the 500-odd-page budget proposal includes a raise in “yield” of 23 percent, factoring in resulting reductions in ridership. Significant cuts include 2,269 jobs; the Z and W subway lines (with some corresponding line extensions to compensate); the entire station customer assistant program; and weekend service on 37 bus routes.

The board won’t take a final vote on its proposed budget for 2009 until its next meeting in December. But the proposal’s fare hikes and route cuts, leaked a few days ago by the Daily News, already had people hopping mad.  read more »

The deal to put $15 billion in residential and commercial development atop the M.T.A.'s West Side rail yards has hit a delay, as the agency will not sign a contract with developer Related Companies this week, as was originally scheduled. The state authority says it has reached an agreement with Related (which is in a joint venture with Goldman Sachs) to push back the deadline for signing a contract for the property by another 90 days, as the M.T.A. has been slower than expected in producing the needed paperwork.

"We have together agreed on an extension of the designation period," said Gary Dellaverson, the CFO of the M.T.A. (who has to have one of the least enviable jobs in government these days). "Our expectation was that the documents would have been turned a month and a half ago.

"This is my fault—the fault of the M.T.A.," he said. "This is not a product of either Related or Goldman or their lawyers."  read more »

The Regional Plan Association released a comprehensive report today, calling for the long-term creation of a host of transit projects--including new subway extensions, light rail and rapid bus service--designed to expand capacity and service as the area's population grows.

Among the recommendations were calls for a light rail loop in midtown that connects to the emerging far West Side; rapid bus service on First and Second avenues; an eastward extension of the planned Second Avenue Subway to include stops in the Lower East Side; an extension of the planned subway to reach westward across 125th Street; new ferry service across the East River; and a set of new subway extensions outside of Manhattan.  read more »

The Port Authority is slated to recommend a closure of the No. 1 train south of Chambers Street for a series of months, likely during the summer, according to multiple people familiar with the agency's plans.

The recommendation is expected to be part of the Port Authority's report on dates and budgets, which will likely announce the rebuilding effort is facing around $1.7 billion in cost overruns.

The closure would not be unprecedented, as the M.T.A. has closed the train for many weekends south of Chambers Street to help construction efforts, running shuttle buses between South Ferry and Chambers. But the length of the closure would be certain to frustrate commuters from Staten Island and could cause complications with the service on the 1/2/3 lines.  read more »

The city and the M.T.A. officially kicked off their "select bus service" on 34th Street today, a higher-speed service that sets bus-only lanes on the street, from First Avenue to 11th Avenue.

The initiative, which ultimately envisions a partition between the bus lanes and car lanes, has been highlighted as a way to increase capacity to the far West Side as the area develops. It is now illegal for most other vehicles to travel in the bus-only lanes, recently painted red.The state Legislature did not act on a bill pushed by the city that would have allowed cameras to ticket drivers who venture into the lanes illegally, so the enforcement is left to the police.  read more »

On Friday afternoon, Senator Hillary Clinton announced proposed legislation which includes $237 million in new funding for New York City's mass transit system. The bulk of the cash will go toward the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in an effort to prevent future fare increases.

"One of the best ways to save money, help the environment, end our dependence on foreign oil and free our roads up is mass transit," Senator Clinton said during a press conference in the middle of Grand Central Station.

She stressed the need to alleviate congestion, which she said costs the country $68 billion per year, and highlighted the efforts of countries like France and China, whose investments in mass transit dwarf those of the United States.  read more »

Might be a bit premature to get in line for a Related Companies-built condo on the western rail yard. The state released an early document in the rezoning process for the site just south of the Javits Center that lays out a tentative schedule for the eight towers slated to rise on the property, with the earliest completion date set for September 2015, and the latest being December 2018. (The document is for the western half of the 26-acre West Side rail yards, as the eastern half was rezoned in 2005, mostly for commercial buildings.)

Related won the rail yards back in May, when it pledged to give the M.  read more »

When Peter Eide moved to Clinton Hill, he had a "fantastical" idea.

The sculptor had spent 12 years moving around the borough after arriving from Philadelphia: Greenpoint, Williamsburg, back to Clinton Hill. But Mr. Eide, now 37, never strayed far from the G train, the only subway line in the city that doesn't travel through Manhattan. And he never stopped thinking of that idea he had: to connect his neighborhood G train stop, Fulton Street, to the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street transit hub, effectively linking the line to almost a dozen other routes.

The fantastical part? A 660-foot tunnel buried under Fort Greene.  read more »

The M.T.A. did not seem to notice the chorus of boos that erupted across the city from public officials and subway riders alike upon hearing news of a potential 8 percent fare hike next year, because today the agency went even further.

City Room reports that the M.T.A. will also request at its Friday board meeting an additional 5 percent increase to take effect by January 2011 — for a cumulative increase of 13.4 percent over 18 months.

The M.T.A. argues that raising fares is the only way to deal with a projected $900 million budget gap. Though dissenters at the "contentious" meeting today claimed that there's more fat to trim on the M.T.A.'s budget.

Stayed tuned for the outcome on Friday.

A panel of transportation advocates held on the Upper West Side on Thursday night reached a predictable consensus:

“The M.T.A. is in deep doo-doo right now and it’s only going to get worse," according to the Regional Plan Association's Jeffrey Zupan.

More on the panel from Em Whitney at The Politicker.

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted unanimously today to rescind the free E-ZPass privileges of former board members, their families, and the families of current board members.

"They can't exempt themselves from the very policies ... that they're asking the riders to bear," Gene Russianoff, attorney for transit advocacy group the Straphangers Campaign, said, referring to fare hikes.

The decision came after close to an hour and a half of deliberations behind closed doors. Fifty-two former board members and 34 current members will be affected.

And at least one of them is upset. Warren S.  read more »

Here are the subway stations (and the lines they service) where the M.T.A. has proposed delaying improvements:

• Four on the Pelham line (the 6 train)
• Four on the Sea Beach line that were to occur in late 2009 (the N train)
• 10 stations on the West End line (the D and M trains);
• The Smith-9th Street station on the Culver line (F and G trains)

At a public hearing on Monday afternoon, M.T.A. officials proposed a new set of amendments (PDF) to the struggling agency's capital program for 2005-09.

"I certainly believe that riders should be concerned about what we're looking at," M.T.A. Executive Director Elliot Sander said.

In order to cope with higher costs and new priority projects, the M.T.A. plans to defer several projects to the 2010-14 capital program. To fund $2.3 billion in major program increases at New York City Transit, for example, the M.T.A. is deferring a number of projects collectively worth $2.4 billion, including vent plants ($385 million) and 19 station rehabilitations ($279 million).  read more »

Advocates reacted with disappointment and worry to the news that the G train will not receive the service increases that the Metropolitan Transit Authority promised riders in February.

"The M.T.A. has done a grave injustice to G train riders and commuters in Brooklyn if it fails to enact service enhancements," said State Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn. In May, Mr. Jeffries and others launched a campaign to pressure the M.T.A. to increase the G's frequency and to restore its four-car trains to six cars.

"The M.T.A. seems to be primarily in the business of broken promises," Teresa Toro of Save the G said today.  read more »

Not exactly. But close. The Times' William Neuman reports this morning that the perennially put-upon G Train will not be part of a round of scaled-back service improvements:

One line that had been scheduled for more service in the original proposal last December but was not included in this round of improvements was the G. Riders on the G often complain of long waits between trains. Officials said the G did not exceed the loading guidelines.

The M.T.A.'s decision will, of course, annoy many G Train riders, not least those who kicked off a campaign in May to improve service.

It only took three weeks for the MTA to “postpone” the service upgrades promised after the March fare hikes, so we were skeptical when officials told frustrated straphangers that the package might be approved in June if the MTA’s financial situation improved.

MTA Executive Director Lee Sander said Wednesday that the transportation authority faced an operating deficit of as much as $500 million to $700 million next year—mainly due to a dip in real estate tax revenue and the rising costs of fuel—and warned that if Albany did pitch in more money to fill the gap, the burden would fall on passengers.

But, according to a statement issued today by riders advocacy group the Straphangers Campaign, New Yorkers already pay 55 percent of the city's transit costs, giving them the highest fare burden in the nation. In other large transit networks, fares account for an average of 40 percent of operating budgets.  read more »

Governor Paterson today announced the creation of a new panel to help find money to keep the M.T.A. afloat and running, as the agency is facing a tremendous shortfall in needed funding for the coming years.

The panel, led by Dick Ravitch, boasts infrastructure pros, the respective budget directors for the state and the city, the CEO of Con Edison, developer Douglas Durst, M.T.A. executive director Lee Sander, and the director of the Port Authority in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Peter Goldmark, among others.

Transit advocates and some officials widely expect the panel to recommend some sort of combination of increases in taxes and fees, perhaps locally, perhaps statewide; perhaps a combination. The fiscal woes of the M.T.A.—it’s upcoming five-year capital program is expected to be somewhere around $17 billion short of the $30 billion or so desired—could lead to service and upkeep setbacks if the money is not found [more here on this issue].  read more »

At an Assembly hearing this morning on the far West Side, Lee Sander, executive director of the M.T.A., indicated that as the far West Side grows, the agency is considering bringing rapid bus service or a light rail to the district, supplementing the planned 1.5-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line.

“Between light rail and bus rapid transit, we are going to want to do everything we can to improve connectivity to the far West Side and the rest of Manhattan, but I think it needs to be a supplement to the No. 7 line,” Mr. Sander said. “We are working closely with [city Department of Transportation] Commissioner [Janette] Sadik-Khan in advancing bus rapid transit, and we ultimately would like to see an extensive network of bus rapid transit, which would be relevant in terms of certainly the 34th Street corridor, and as well as potentially the 42nd Street corridor.”  read more »

Now it's really official: the M.T.A. board this afternoon voted to approve a deal with the Related Companies and Goldman Sachs to develop over the 26-acre West Side rail yards.

A few nuggets of rail yards info from the meeting: According to M.T.A. CFO Gary Dellaverson, who summarized negotiations to the board, the key to the Related Companies' victory was its willingness to literally pick up the $1.054 billion Tishman Speyer deal and sign it, only inserting one notable change.  read more »

"The four-car G train is just like one step above the horse and buggy days," State Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn told the crowd at Wednesday night's Save the G rally at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene.

Almost 100 G riders kicked off a monthlong campaign to increase service on the "forgotten stepchild" of the New York subway system, as Mr. Jeffries and others have called it.

"It's important to increase the intensity of the public campaign," Mr. Jeffries said, "to stress to the M.T.A. that G train service enhancements are absolutely necessary."

On June 25, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board will meet to discuss systemwide service improvements. Mr. Jeffries, who organized the rally, intends to make sure the G is a top priority. In the coming weeks, G advocates will be writing letters, sending e-mails and corralling the support of elected officials in an effort to "convince the M.T.A. to do the right thing," as Mr. Jeffries put it.  read more »

The storyline behind Related’s surprise win in the West Side rail yards bidding goes, more or less, as follows, according to a Monday afternoon press conference with M.T.A. officials and Related Chairman Stephen Ross:

Back in the late winter, when a round of bids was due to the M.T.A., executives at News Corp. gave Related Companies a call within 24 hours of the bid deadline, announcing that the company would not commit to becoming an anchor tenant in Related's bid as it had previously indicated. With little time to think before its bid was due, and at a time when Bear Stearns was collapsing, Related backed out of its full bid, hoping to hang on to a partial deal for the western half of the rail yards.  read more »

It’s official: Jumping back from the collapse of a deal with Tishman Speyer Properties, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is going with Stephen Ross’ Related Companies to develop the West Side rail yards, Manhattan’s largest remaining parcel of developable land.

As we first reported last night, Related snapped up the deal from the M.T.A. less than a week after it abandoned talks with Tishman Speyer. Tishman—apparently scared off by the tremendous risk involved in developing with no anchor tenant, a parcel in need of rezoning and an inclement lending market—tried to change the terms of the deal to lessen its risk at the last minute.

In a release from the M.T.A., it seems the agency gave Related, in a partnership with Goldman Sachs, an option to have more time to build before they start making rent payments if the developer so chooses, allowing the team to defer payments for two years.

The deal is very similar to the Tishman proposal in terms of finances, pegged at $1.054 billion in net present value.  read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has reached a tentative deal to award development rights for the West Side rail yards to the Related Companies, according to a person familiar with discussions. The deal for the 26-acre site on Manhattan’s West Side comes less than a week after the M.T.A. broke off talks for the property with Tishman Speyer, the major development firm that was announced the winning bidder in late March.  read more »

When the L train in Williamsburg stopped running mid-morning and the northern end of the neighborhood temporarily grinded to a halt, two things came to mind. First, Williamsburg residents are almost completely reliant on one subway line. Second, there really is a Williamsburg “type.”

At around 9:50--rush hour in the neighborhood populated by young professionals, artsy types, and those who appear to be perennially unemployed--an anonymous voice announced to passengers impatiently waiting inside a First Avenue-bound subway car parked at the Bedford Avenue stop that service to Manhattan would be suspended. Hapless, confused-looking 20- and 30-somethings spilled out onto Williamsburg’s main strip on their cell phones, trying to arrange transportation, myself included.  read more »

Did Jerry and Rob Speyer dive into a project too big for the real estate giants to handle?

When Tishman Speyer Properties was announced winner of the West Side rail yards development rights in late March, the scene was a cheery one, with the governor and mayor on hand at the yards to hail the Speyers as victors. Now, with the deal apparently dead, the mood has changed substantially [background on the deal collapse here].

In the weeks since the March announcement, Tishman Speyer appeared to grow unexpectedly wary. What was ultimately the sticking point in negotiations—the firm wanted to wait an extra year or so before closing on the eastern rail yard, until the western rail yard was rezoned—was a point that Tishman accepted a few weeks back when it was selected.  read more »

With the West Side rail yards development deal on very shaky ground, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky today announced a bill that would chart a new course for the 26-acre parcel west of Penn Station, bringing in a new authority to follow a Battery Park City model of piecemeal development.

“Instead of selling at the bottom of the market for a price that was never really what the property was worth in the long run,” Mr. Brodsky said, “we should do what we know works.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the rail yards, has been trying to sell them to a private firm to develop, though yesterday talks broke down with selected developer Tishman Speyer, which had planned to pay the M.T.A. about $1 billion for the property.  read more »

The deal for billions of dollars worth of development over the West Side rail yards collapsed Thursday afternoon, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer hitting an impasse in negotiations. The failure to reach a deal came more than five weeks after the M.T.A. announced Tishman Speyer as the winner of the development rights, after a months-long bidding contest between six of the city’s largest development firms.

According to a statement from the M.T.A., the failure to complete the deal came as Tishman Speyer refused to close on the agreement for the eastern half of the rail yards until the western half was rezoned, a process that could easily take until late 2009, if not 2010. The accord reached in late March held that Tishman would close on the eastern half; then, after the western half was rezoned, they would close the deal on that section, completing the deal. The total deal was estimated to bring the M.T.A. about $1 billion from Tishman.

The collapse in talks came one day after the M.T.A. passed a self-imposed seven-day deadline to finish negotiations and sign a conditional letter of designation, a document that was not signed when Tishman won the bidding. Officials said at the time of that announcement, in late March, that they were highly confident a final deal would be reached, characterizing the designation letter as something of a formality.  read more »

Five weeks after Tishman Speyer was announced the winner of the West Side rail yards, negotiations are still unfinished between Tishman, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city, an M.T.A. spokesman confirmed.

The parties yesterday missed a seven-day deadline set by the M.T.A. at its board meeting last week, with the final details of a conditional letter of designation yet to be finalized.  read more »

When we walk down Broadway in Manhattan, we sometimes forget that New York is virtually surrounded by water. In fact, the five boroughs have 578 miles of shoreline. If global warming ends up melting enough sea ice at the poles to cause the sea level to rise, New York City is in a world of trouble.  read more »

Metropolitan Transportation Authority executive director Lee Sander seems a bit uncertain about the $100 million that developer Forest City Ratner owes the agency for Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project. He had this to say earlier this month in a capital program “webinar” (no, we don’t quite know what that word is either), responding to a question about the MTA’s current capital plan:

There is $100 million associated with the sale of Atlantic Yards, and many of you have read in the newspapers some of the difficulty Forest City is having with that development, so hopefully that will proceed, but we want to make sure that that happens—but we’re concerned about that.

 read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer have missed their first deadline in the project to develop the West Side rail yards, as the date for the MTA to officially designate Tishman Speyer as the developer has come and gone.  read more »

On Friday morning, I posted about transit activists’ attempts to pressure the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to move V cars to the G train. Friday afternoon, we received from Jim Trent of the Queens Civic Congress a copy of the note he sent to MTA chief executive Elliot Sander, and the eight-page letter he received in response.  read more »

A developer for the West Side rail yards could be selected as early as tonight, with Tishman Speyer and a venture between the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust leading the field, according to two people familiar with discussions.  read more »

The directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were not part of the mass of resignations requested by the Paterson administration.

The Times Union reported today that Governor Paterson’s staff has asked all directors and commissioners to put in their letters of resignation so as to give the new governor more flexibility in shaping his administration.  read more »

Responding to fears of exploding construction costs, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has finished a financial review of its major capital initiatives, finding projects to be hundreds of millions more than previous estimates. Missing from the list, however, was the planned West Side extension of the No. 7 line, which would bring the subway from Times Square to the base of the Javits Center.  read more »

In an apparent effort to bolster political support for congestion pricing, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released a $29.5 billion five-year capital plan for all sorts of transit improvements and updates today, counting on $4.5 billion to come from the mayor’s controversial plan.

Included in the capital plan are hundreds of new train and subway cars, updated signaling systems, money for the Second Avenue Subway, and a rebirth of a grand entrance to the redone Fulton Street Transit Center downtown (the entrance was scrapped last month in the name of cost overruns).

The message from the state agency was clear: if the Legislature does not approve congestion pricing, the MTA will have to substantially scale back its ambitions.  read more »

Revised bids for the West Side rail yards were due today, and Brookfield Properties did not submit a response, leaving four of the city’s biggest developers in a battle for control of the 26-acre site west of Pennsylvania Station.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the site, put out a statement a few minutes ago saying that the agency had received four revised proposals, with no bid from Brookfield. The timeline, which puts selection of a developer in April, remains the same, the MTA said.  read more »

Marvin Franklin, an M.T.A. track worker, was killed by a train last April, after 22 years of working the night shift. For the last ten of those years, he had boarded the F train in Jamaica every morning, after getting off work at 7 a.m., and sketched other passengers all the way to the Art Students League on 57th Street, where he produced watercolors, oils and etchings based on his sketches.  read more »

Residents on the West Side are charging that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Bloomberg administration are proceeding irresponsibly with the planned 1.5-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line by starting the project before settling numerous lingering financial questions.

Manhattan’s Community Board 4, the land use-savvy group that helped defeat the West Side stadium plan in 2005, sent a letter earlier this month to the MTA and the city outlining concerns about the finances of the project, particularly its potential for large overruns. The project has a budget of $2.1 billion; a $1.1 billion tunneling contract has already been awarded; and the community board feels overruns are inevitable given that the stated project budget hasn’t changed since 2003.

The letter comes on the heels of the announcement last month by the MTA that plans for a grand entrance at the Fulton Street Transit Center downtown will be scrapped in the name of major cost overruns. The agency received a bid of about $500 million more than was budgeted for the final phase of the Fulton Street project, and has been forced to scale back its plans.  read more »