THE MTA IS THE BLOOD VESSELS OF NEW YORK CITY 

The MTA has an affect on everybody that lives in New York City. It is the means to get to work, to get home, and to go places. Many people need the MTA to make money to feed their families. The MTA is like the blood vessels of New York City, they transport people to any destination they need in the City. But the problem we’re facing is somewhat similar to the arteries being clogged, there is a ton of congestion throughout the City which ultimately causes delays. This means people are late for work, which means they’re in threat of maybe losing their jobs. Let me not go that far, but you get the point. The MTA is what causes New York City to keep being alive per say. To make New York City itself more efficient we have to start with the MTA.

The MTA has an average 5.5 million daily riders, and about 1.7 billion ridership annually. This means the MTA is a huge part of New York City’s economy. This is what I mean when I say to make New City itself more efficient we have to start at one of the bigger roots of the problem.

Delays

There are so many reasons that the MTA is delayed everyday. The system of the train patrolling or signalling is very outdated. With miscommunications this can cause serious delays to over 30 mins. There are a ton of stations so every-so often there is maintenance on these stations so riders are forced to take other trains that bring them to the right location. This influx of riders switching trains causes overcrowded trains that are usually heavily delayed. Delays can also be caused by people jumping onto tracks or even falling over. There are many stations that have a very narrow platform which is very dangerous especially to the disabled and mothers carrying strollers. Over congestion also causes delays due to the fact that train over moves slower because it is heavier, plus at every stop it takes longer for people to get in and out of the train. 

Budget 

According to the official NY records (Division of the Budget 2020) the MTA Budget is 17 Billion Dollars. How do they obtain this 17 billion dollars, well 12% comes from toll revenue, 38% farebox revenue, and 36% Dedicated taxes. This means that most of the money that operates the MTA comes from the taxpayers pockets. I feel that this is unfair, we pay for the train yet the train system does not improve at all. 17 million sounds like a ton of money, but the question is where is it all going. According to the official MTA website (MTA Operating Budget Basics 2020) “The majority of our Operating Budget is spent on the more than 70,000 workers required to keep New York moving 24/7. This includes salaries, overtime, retiree pensions, and healthcare. A quarter of the budget goes to Non-Labor costs — things like maintenance equipment, software, and other basic expenses that every business needs to operate efficiently. About a third of non-labor costs are electricity and fuel to run our buses, subways and trains; and paratransit services. The remainder goes to Debt Service — repaying the money we borrowed to help fund the MTA’s capital investments. Let me break this down for you, the majority of the budget goes to the employees and the day to day fuel, electricity and maintenance. This is completely understandable, like I said the MTA is a huge part of New York City’s economy. But what I cannot grasp is the fact that a quarter of the Budget which is about 4.25 billion dollars are being spent on non-Labor costs but the system is getting worse rather than becoming more efficient. 

Budget Proposal 

I have a Budget Proposal Plan for the head of financials for the MTA. I see that most of the money comes from the people so I don’t want to change the dollar amount for the budget. Let’s keep it the exact same but with the 4.25 Billion there needs to be change. I don’t want to address the other 75% of the budget due to the fact that it is for basic necessary costs that are unavoidable in most circumstances. With the introduction od COVID-19 less and less people want to ride the subway to protect themselves from germs and physical contact. I will go on to explain some solutions that may work, to protect the citizens of  New York City, to cause less delays in the subway, and to overall make the subway system a well oiled and efficient machine.

Reasons for Solutions

There are several reasons for the solutions that are about to be addressed. The problem with the MTA is that there are too many problems to fix. The main problem is the delays and the crowdedness but this is caused by many subproblems. Firstly I want to go over safety, there are 2 subcategories in this too. The first one being solutions to make the subway system more COVID-19 friendly or less in risk to catch it. The second one is the normal safety like falling off the platforms or getting injured on the platform. The second section will be talking more about changes that affect the overall efficiency of the train, may that be the speed of the train or navigation issues that can be overcome to make the trains more efficient.

Solution 1 UV Lights in the Subway

As you know COVID-19 has been rampant in New York City since the very start. Since there are so many daily riders the spread of the disease can be fairly hard to maintain. As people use the train daily riders touch things like handle bars on the train or the stations, people have to turn the turnstile with their hands. This can cause COVID-19 to spread even faster. To combat this the MTA has deployed more employees to clean everything, this in the short term is more cost effective due to the hope of the vaccine coming shortly. One solution to this is adding UV lights that eliminate germs installed at the stations and in the subway carts themselves. According to a statement given by the MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick J Foyle(Lehmann, 2020), “We’re also working with antimicrobials, federal labs and labs, frankly, around the world, with respect to antimicrobials, which could prove to not only eradicate the COVID-19 virus, but also to do so for weeks and months. We’ve tested those materials on subway cars and buses,”. This is a step in the right direction when it comes to eradicating the disease and making it safer for all riders.

Solution 2 More Spacious Platforms

There are over a hundred incidents each year of people falling off the train platforms due to accidental reasons. If someone is on the tracks this causes heavy delays. There are platforms that are less than 30ft across. This means touching the yellow safety line is inevitable in  most circumstances. The only time you should be stepping on the yellow safety line is right before getting on or off the train itself. The number of accidental falls would go down by a ton which would lead to an overall more efficient train schedule.

Solution 3 Safety Screens 

To tie in to last solution many people jump off the platform to commit suicide. Sadly enough this also causes delays in congestion within the subway.There are many places in the world including France and China that have implemented the Safety Screen system. The Safety Screen opens up when the train approaches the platform. This makes it so people can’t just fall off or do it intentionally. This will help with the efficiency of the subway in the long run.

Solution 4 Improved Signal Controls

  The subway signal controls are extremely outdated and are from the 1930’s, almost a century old now. This system is responsible for monitoring the movements of the trains on the track and supervises the space between each train. According to (Cummins, 2019) “This antiquated system relies on fixed-block signaling, which forces cars to slow down when they move into buffer or occupied blocks on the track.” This is very inefficient due to the fact that only the drivers know how fast the train is actually going. To update these Signals it would cost roughly 7.1 billion dollars. This is about double the budget that we are allowed to spend. My solution to this is to add this advanced system to the busiest parts of the city and have it deployed to all of New York City within the next 5-7 years. Even though this seems like a long time, in the long run it will make the subway system work a ton more efficiently. There would be less delays and congestion overall. Plus this will ultimately help with the train tracking apps. The data will be more precise which is a huge bonus to the riders.

Solution 5 Lighter Carts 

Most of the trains that are deployed are very old trains. This means they have a high maintenance cost and are very heavy. This causes the train to move very slow and ultimately cause delays and congestion. The maintenance of these types of trains claws at the day to day part of the budget. If we can save money from that portion we can put more money into the Non-Labor section of the budget. The solution to this is to make lighter carts, this has already been done in China by a company called CRRC. They have developed a light-weight modular cart system that is made by carbon to make the train lighter. This is something that we should adopt that would benefit New York City in the long run.

Solution 6 Tunnel Maintenance Robots

A huge chunk of the Budget gets used on paying employees for scheduled maintenance. Although this is part of the Budget that we are not using, cutting from this will allow more money to flow in the Non-Labor part of the Budget. Simple tasks like drilling and sealing can easily be done by robots with artificial intelligence. This will take many people’s jobs but in the long run more jobs will be made and the subway system will be more efficient.

Solution 7 Adding New Stations, Lines and Tracks

Even though we have 472 stations in New York City, this is still not enough. Many people have to take transfers due to how the train lines work. This is a root cause of the delays and congestions that happen throughout the city. Unlike most cities that are always adding new things to their train system the MTA hasn’t changed much over the last 80 years in terms of tracks and stations. There have been some new station installations but nothing too extreme. Having more trains means less congestion for people to get on a single line. Plus there will be a ton less transfers so overcrowdedness will go down. This will have the most dramatic effect on reducing  the delays that occur daily.

I believe the subway system is the blood vessels of New York City. To make the city more efficient they have to make sure the subway systems are working efficiently. There are so many causes to the delays and inefficiencies of the subway system. To tackle the main issue we have to address all the subproblems. Once these subproblems are dealt with the main problem will slowly decrease naturally. The MTA’s budget is already pretty high so investing more taxpayer money into it is not the solution. The solution is to use the money more efficiently with the solutions above .

Sources

Division of the Budget. (n.d.). Retrieved December 04, 2020, from https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy21/exec/agencies/appropdata/MetropolitanTransportationAuthority.html

Cummins, E. (2019, October 3). 19 evidence-based solutions to New York City’s subway disaster. Retrieved December 05, 2020, from https://www.popsci.com/nyc-subway-problems-and-solutions

Lehmann, C. (2020, August 17). Is It Safe Again to Take the Bus or Subway? Retrieved December 05, 2020, from https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200817/is-it-safe-again-to-take-the-bus-or-subway

MTA Operating Budget Basics. (2020). Retrieved December 04, 2020, from https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics

Subway and bus facts 2019. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05, 2020, from https://new.mta.info/agency/new-york-city-transit/subway-bus-facts-2019