The MTA’s un-fare-ness
The Brooklyn Paper
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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority performed disastrously this week after Metrocard vending machines malfunctioned during rush hours on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

For large portions of the day, people without cash could not buy or add value to their fare cards, the result of a computer glitch that created long lines of frustrated straphangers. Many riders lost money in the crisis — and it’s unclear if they’ll get it back.

Of course, there was a very easy solution to that problem: Open the gates and let everyone in for free until the glitch is corrected.

True, this isn’t a long-term solution to a system-wide computer problem — but it is a common-sense approach for getting MTA customers to work on time.
Brooklyn Bridge Realty

Funny how common sense eluded the MTA this week.

Actually, it’s not that funny; this is an agency that does not inspire confidence in any way. For example:

• Transit planners have no clue about the actual costs of renovation and maintenance work — and their failure to accurately project those costs renders moot any kind of public debate about what work should and should not be done. In Brooklyn, more than a dozen stations that were put on the fast track for rehabilitation only last year were jarringly removed from that list just a few months later as the agency cited unanticipated cost overruns.

Now the agency says it needs a fare hike next year and another one in 2010. Why stop at two fare increases in consecutive years? How about three? Six? Ten? Clearly these numbers get plucked from thin air, so how can the public know what the MTA’s true costs are?

• The agency is woefully unskilled at quickly figuring out usage patterns so that neighborhoods that need more service get it, while neighborhoods that don’t need as high a level of service see their service cut back. For years, for example, several MTA bus lines terminated near the Fulton Ferry Landing in DUMBO even though very few customers actually rode the busses to the end. Eventually, the busses were curtailed. But now that DUMBO is a booming office, residential and tourist neighborhood only one bus line — one of the least-frequent at that — comes down to a waterfront that, on top of everything else, is the site of an entrance to the future Brooklyn Bridge Park, where activities and events are already taking place. Local officials are desperate for more transit service to the neighborhood, but it is not forthcoming.

The same thing is true for Red Hook. Bus and transit service is so bad that many commuters ride the free IKEA shuttle! A long-promised Red Hook–to–Manhattan bus was, alas, eliminated in the last round of MTA cuts.

• The MTA sells its assets on the cheap to hand-picked developers and cronies of its well-connected board members rather than selling them on the open market. Atlantic Yards, of course, is the most egregious example of this, with the MTA selling the air rights over its Vanderbilt Rail Yards to Bruce Ratner for $100 million less than its appraised value.

Given this level of incompetence, this week’s failure is not surprising at all.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper