December 6, 2007
2 Vs. F, C Vs. 5: Subways to be Managed by Line
The New York City Transit Authority, the MTA division that oversees the subways and buses, will be now split up the management of the subway lines and instead assign a manager to deal with a line or a number of lines. The NY Times spoke to NYC Transit president Howard Roberts Jr.:
The goal, Mr. Roberts said, is to have 24 subway lines operating in many ways as 24 self-contained railroads. (The number may vary, depending on how the lines are counted.) They will compete against one another and be rated on service, cleanliness, on-time performance and other measures.Interesting! Of course, trying to figure out how management would be reorganized is a huge undertaking, so the program will begin with a pilot (of course) reorganization of having a new manager for the 7 line and one for the L line (because their tracks are self-contained) starting on Monday. After three months, riders will be asked to fill out another report card; Roberts' hopes are modest, as he'd like the 7's C- improve to a C (the L got a C).Mr. Roberts said he believed that giving the individual lines more autonomy and their own managers will help the system respond faster and more directly to customers’ complaints or other problems.
This comes after the MTA revealed subway riders gave the C line a D+ in the Subway Report Card. City Council member Simcha Felder belittled the subway grading initiative, saying, "This is the epitome of New York City Transit being disingenuous with a hogwash propaganda machine. Asking people to grade you when you know already that things stink — that's really propaganda at its worst."
Actually, what would be interesting to do is to grade the lines against each other. You know the subways are going to be stinky, so it's hard to imagine a grade for them. But you could probably assess that the D is better than, say, the 2. And Second Avenue Sagas thinks splitting up management of the lines is a bad idea because is there "need for yet another level of bureaucracy at the MTA."
Photograph of a subway conductor by shveckle on Flickr
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More bureaucracy will only reward incompetence.
great opportunity for misscommunication, inefficiency and redundancy. Oh wait- they're already on that.
We already know we have the worst subway system in the universe... but Simcha Felder needs to just go away.
everyone's dream job- manager of the L line
I don't think decentralizing the lines and introducing competition among them is necessarily a bad thing. That's generally how the market works and while it's certainly imperfect (and also not anywhere close to "free"), competition generates winners and losers. C train, I'm rooting for you!
The question I'm pondering, though, is what are the incentives for success and what are the consequences for failure? Without either, this is just a different configuration and a waste of time. If these new positions are places to park people being rewarded for patronage, or banished by old bosses, we're all screwed.
They did this in London as part of the push to privatize the Tube there...
I wonder what Simcha would think of the pigeons commuting on the A train out in the Rockaways.
I see. This is a clever ploy to redirect any future blame to the MTA by using these 'managers' as scapegoats and blame the unions. Rowdy teenagers on the A line? Fire overseeing manager. Random stabbing on F train? Fire overseeing manager. Patron with full bladder peeing into the tracks at Delancey St. station...you get the point.
Simple math:
More management = more problems!
I can just see it now at a manager's budget coordination meeting. Yes, but my line has more track. Yes, but my line has more stations. Yes, but my line carries more passengers. Yes, but ... You get the idea.
If they were independent then they should be allowed to adjust the amount of fare for each line and see who comes out the winner. Perhaps the Alphabet lines can coordinate their own pricing strategy and the Number lines their own. But that wont work because it will require additional staff to do nothing but ... Didn't think of that idea did you MTA?
now they can justify fare hikes because of more unnecessary jobs and operations cost - its transparent to me