New Yorkers love to complain about the subway. I am no exception. During rush hour, MTA is hands down, the most cursed entity in New York, below and above ground. Older generations love to compare how much better today’s system than the 70s when the subway was in such a state of disrepair. Our generation, however, would only compare our system to the newer systems oversea such as the one in Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, or old systems just like New York, except it was maintained in a much better and cleaner state, such as the one in London, Paris, and Moscow. Or other domestic systems that somehow is better than us, like DC, Boston, and San Francisco. We often complain, but never really think more about how difficult it is to run such an gigantic organization with antique like infrastructure.

I was reading this interview of Elliot “Lee” Sander, the current CEO of MTA, from NYU Wagner’s New York Transportation Journal. I truly get a sense of how difficult it is to run such an organization and how complex the problems are that they are facing. And I forgot how new this new leadership in MTA is, it’s less than a year ago that the new leadership got appointed to the positions. Implementing new policies and changes doesn’t happen quickly, improvements ain’t gonna happen in a day, especially in an overgrown gigantic entity like MTA.

If you visit MTA’s website, you would realize how complex this organization is. It’s seven independent agencies all roll into one, each is their own kingdom. Most of the time they don’t even work together. How to simplified the structure of MTA, eliminate overlapped functions to save resources and to integrate services to make it easier for everyone is a huge challenge in itself, let alone dealing with 100 years old infrastructures that the parts you need for repair and maintain need to custom-made because the companies that made them disappeared into history decades ago. Bringing the system into the 21st century is difficult because the system runs 24/7, 365 days non-stop. Any repair or upgrade means interruption of normal services, which would lead to complaints. It really looks like Sanders and his new staffs really eager to change things around and correct the wrongs of the previous administrations. But the tasks at hand is daunting even to an outsider with limited knowledge of what exactly is going on within the organization. I can’t even imagine being someone who is in the knows and know about what kind of troubles they are in.

We haven’t seen any visible result of the changes the new leadership MTA bring in, and given the on-going fare hike talks and the rainstorms that completely stopped the subway system back in the summer, It’s easy to conclude that this dinosaur hasn’t change at all. One thing I did notice is that this new administration pay much closer attention in listening to what people have to say and they do respond accordingly. From the rider’s report cards where they immediately add additional services to the L & 7 train to try to address the problems once they got the results in, to adding express 7 trains whenever the Mets game ended to relief the leaving crowds. Looks like they are heading to the right direction. Maybe given them some more times, improvements will really be in place. We can’t really be all that hopeful since we are talking about the MTA after all, but if I see some improvement on the G line, (the report cards just went in and result is coming soon), I am willing to be more patient and give them the benefit of a doubt.

You can find the link to the PDF of the interview from Streetsblog.

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1. DC impressions: transportation deadmatch
2. In support of PlaNYC
3. The Subway has its own….what?
4. Subway there and subway here
5. Fantasy Map

Tagged: Subways