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Fare hike postponed

The MTA today proposed to postpone the 5% fare increase, scheduled to kick in Jan 1, 2007, until at least September 2007. Surplus this year will exceed $700 million. More news to follow from big board meeting today.

-- Chuck Bennett

South Ferry delayed, again

MTA Capital Construction reported at it’s committee meeting again that the completion date has again been pushed back, this time to Aug. 2008. Originally, it was to be done in Dec. 2007. The late award of a necessary contract was blamed.

-- Chuck Bennett

On the attack again

John Liu, the Queens councilman and chairman of the transportation committee, rips the MTA again for its Lockheed Martin  contract to wire the subway with 3,000 security cameras and AI software. The TA approved another $4.9 million for Lockheed, making the original $212 million contract no worth $303 million.

“ Lockheed-Martins' no-bid contract announced last August has now grown into a monstrous $300 million behemoth.  This January, the MTA testified before the City Council that the system was delayed because the MTA suddenly decided it needed an $80 million for a command center.  Obviously, a command center for this type of system should have been included in the original procurement.  Now, the MTA wants to add another no-brainer: a $5 million antennae to communicate with first-responders.  And, this amendment doesn't even include the equipment needed to operate the antennae.  This is like building a house and forgetting to draw up plans for the roof and beams.  In the post-Madrid, London, and Mumbai world, we cannot afford the type of unfocused planning and piecemeal implementation of security in our mass transit system."

-- Chuck Bennett

Don’t blame us

During the Transit Committee meetings yesterday, board members learned that the subway system is “completely reliant on Con Ed. Fifty years ago, the subway system produced its own electricity but later turned over its generators to Consolidated Edison. “For the record, in 1958 TWU opposed the sale of the power plants to Con Ed,” said Transport Workers Union Local 100 representative to the board Ed Watt.

-- Chuck Bennett

His own words

The unedited words that got Bloomberg in trouble:

    I think Kevin Burke deserves a thanks from this City. He’s worked as hard as he can every single day since then, as has everybody at Con Ed. And it’s easy to go criticize but once this happened, Con Ed has been doing everything they can to bring it back and I don’t think that I could have gone in and done any better. We’ll later on take a look and see whether or not you could have done it better. But at the moment, we have to live with what Con Ed’s doing. They have been open, they’ve been responsive, they’ve been working well with the City. They’ve accepted our help every time. We can’t ask for anything else.  It’s not our network. It’s their company, their network, and they’ve got to go in and fix that and going after the CEO just because somebody wants to have somebody to blame doesn’t make a lot of sense. We want Con Ed to stay together and to work together and to continue to provide what they basically do in the City—a good level of service for our energy needs.

    I imagine plenty of subway riders were annoyed a his support for Kevin Burke, too.

UPDATE: Bloomberg said today a report on what went wrong and why will  be completed Aug. 2.

-- Chuck Bennett

Keeping track: 7/25/06

Charged words: Mayor Bloomberg sparked a public spat with Queens lawmakers in residents after a praising Con Ed chief Kevin Burke’s handling of the blackouts which left thousands of folks in the dark and wreaked havoc on subway schedules. [amNY]

Found money: Better than expected real estate tax revenues brought in $211 million more than expected to the MTA. But how that plays out in the preliminary budget tomorrow is unclear. Anyway, the MTA’s “found” money and growing surplus is becoming a reoccurring story. [amNY]

West Side Yards: It looks like a vote on the city’s $500 million offer for the rail yards won’t be rushed through a board vote tomorrow. Too many questions and not enough time, board members say. [Newsday via amNY]

Maybe he’s no a morning person. Union protests outside MTA Chair Peter Kalikow’s home yesterday. But was Kalikow even there? Meanwhile, an analysis by the Daily News concludes that the union’s public pressure campaign failed to get its contract ratified failed. Binding arbitration begins August 4. [amNY, Daily News]

Hit on the job: Transit worker Dexter Stinson, 38, was hit early yesterday morning by a No. 2 train near the Jackson Ave. stop while inspecting something on the tracks. A cherry picker was need to haul the 300 pound man to an ambulance. Rescue workers couldn’t handle him alone? Between two people it seems manageable. Anyway, Stinson, a train operator who joined the MTA in 1998, was in intensive care last night. [NY Post]

Second Ave. subway: The MTA is moving forward with underground easements to build the first part of the Second Ave. subway from 96th Street to 63rd St. Completion date is still 2012. [Daily News]

Oooh that smell: Curbed has a lively discussion on various smells on the subway and PATH. [Curbed]

Photo by amNY

-- Chuck Bennett

Where have your hands been?

Cubic Corp. and GE says testing of an “automatic public transit vending machine with integrated early warning explosive detection and supporting faregate capability:” went well in Baltimore. Basically, if you got bomb residue on your hands and use the MetroCard machine, an alarm will sound. New York’s MTA is closely watching the testing.

-- Chuck Bennett

Tracker service advisory

We're moving! Effective tomorrow morning, Tracker will be accessible at this address: http://weblogs.amny.com/news/local/tracker/blog/

The new site is already live, so you can poke around. Immediate improvements include better search functionality and a cleaner, crisper look.  More improvements and content are on the way, so keep checking in and spread the word if you like what you see. By the way, an easy way to find us is at www.amny.com/tracker

Be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds. Hope to see you at our new and improved home.

-- Rolando Pujol and Chuck Bennett

Subway ad watch

Those MTA anti-vandalism ads prompted us at Tracker to do a double-take. Stand close to one and you see scratchitti on the big headlines. Our first thought was to savor the vandalization of an anti-vandalism ad. But on closer inspection, we saw the "vandalism" was the ad designer's very own.

And over at Gawker, there's talk about those ubiquitous ads from the School of Visual Arts that ask aspiring artists (and everyone else, really) "How bad do you want to be good?"  But just how good are the ads?

-- Rolando Pujol