Service on the Rockaways line of the A train will finally resume at the end of this month, MTA officials announced Thursday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that after Sandy hit, the MTA had to rebuild 1,500 feet of washed-out tracks, replace signals and wires, and rehabilitate two stations that had been flooded during the storm.

“The MTA did a remarkable job of restoring service following the storm and, at the end of this month, the A line in the Rockaways will be up and running,” he said.

Workers also installed a steel wall along two miles of Jamaica Bay to protect against future washouts, Cuomo said.

The MTA also announced they will solicit engineers and project managers to join a new division to plan for protecting stations against future floods.

The toll of the hurricane on the MTA was about $4.8 billion in damage, officials said.

The post Rockaways A train line will resume May 30 appeared first on Metro.us.

An MTA employee and an accomplice have been charged with conspiring and stealing $4,000 in cash from a Queens subway station last week.

Tracy King, 48, who worked at the 111th Street station off the 7 line in Queens, allegedly had her friend duct tape her hands and mouth and steal the cash from the subway booth, according to the Queens District Attorney’s office. She planned to split the money with the robber.

“Instead of being the alleged victim of a gunpoint robbery at her job, the MTA employee charged in this case is accused of staging the purported robbery and splitting the proceeds of the crime with an accomplice,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

King told police that she was working at the station around 11 a.m. last Saturday when a man arrived at the station dressed in a reflective contractor’s vest and asked for the keys to the employees’ break room. Inside the break room, the robber pointed a revolver and a stun gun at King as he placed duct tape on her hands and mouth, King told cops. The man then allegedly went to the ticket booth and took $4,000. King was discovered by other MTA employees who called police to report the robbery.

Police arrested Anthony Brown, 42, after they lifted a fingerprint off a plastic container in the break room. Brown told police that the robbery was King’s idea. He also said he was not armed and that he has known King for about 10 years. Phone records revealed that King and Brown had talked as recently as the day before the robbery.

Cops also recovered $2,334 in cash from inside Brown’s girlfriend’s Queens apartment.

Brown and King face charges of third- and fourth-degree grand larceny, defrauding the government, fifth-degree conspiracy and third-degree falsely reporting an incident. They each face up to seven years in prison if convicted.

The post MTA clerk arrested for inside-job robbery appeared first on Metro.us.

A man was hit by a Q train this morning after stopping to urinate on the tracks.

According to the New York Post, a man was in the tunnel at the Barclays Center station to relieve himself.

The train hit him after he climbed onto the tracks.

He was taken to the hospital in stable condition, according to the newspaper.

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Amid growing questions as to the New Jersey Transit’s readiness for the havoc wrecked by Hurricane Sandy, WNYC requested the storm preparedness plans NJT purported to have had in advance of the onset of the storm.

The transit agency complied, sending a three-page document.

All three pages can be seen here. But the pages do not shed light on any sort of plan: all three pages are completely blacked out.

A spokesman for NJT reportedly told WNYC the heavy redactions were necessary due to “recent events including the uncovering of an Al Qaeda-led terrorist plot targeting rail service.”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The $1 fee imposed by the MTA to encourage riders to reuse their MetroCards is producing an unexpected amount of extra revenue for the transit agency.

The so-called “green” MetroCard was supposed to reduce the number of used MetroCards that end up in the garbage, but a transit executive said last week that more riders are paying the $1 fee for a new card than expected, The Daily News reports.

If the fee continues to produce extra cash for the MTA, the agency will exceed the $20 million in new revenues and savings that it anticipated when drafting the budget, the executive said.

The $1 surcharge, imposed in March, was expected to generate an estimated $18 million in revenue this year. Printing fewer cards and reducing cleanup costs was expected to save an additional $2 million.

The extra revenue will likely put pressure on the agency to make system improvements and service restorations, the News reports.

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The New York subway system is dirty – with human skin.

From 2007 to 2008, biologists from the University of Colorado analyzed air samples that were taken from several New York City subway platforms and found that about 15 percent of the matter that they analyzed consisted of skin.

Most of the skin came from heels and heads of riders, but 12 percent of the skin came from other areas such as belly buttons, ear canals, armpits and rear ends.

The study found that there was little difference between the air from stations such as Grand Central and City Hall to the air breathed outside in Union Square Park.

The only exception was the increased fungi in the stations, which the study attributed to wood rot fungi on the wooden subway tracks.

“We encountered no organisms of public health concern,” the study stated. “The general uniformity of microbial assemblages throughout the system indicates good air mixing, a testimony to the efficiency of the train-pumping process.”

The study’s publisher, the American Microbiological Association, wants to use the data that they gathered to analyze the effects of subway flooding and the use of biological warfare.

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UPDATE: The MTA agreed to reschedule some subway work after locals complained that shutting down the L during a festival would hurt businesses.

Originally scheduled for the weekend of June 15 through 17, that L train shutdown will now be pushed back a week to June 22 through 24, an MTA spokesman told Metro.

“We are pleased that we were able to accommodate the community’s request by rescheduling,” spokesman Charles Seaton said. “Of course, we will continue to make every endeavor to avoid major shutdowns on weekends which interfere with important events in communities served by the L line.”

Metro’s original story is below:

The MTA should not shut down the L train on holiday and festival weekends, officials said yesterday.

Local politicians said that the MTA should reschedule shutdowns that are planned for the L train two weekends in upcoming months.

One shutdown is planned for Memorial Day weekend later this month, and the second is planned during the Northside Festival, beginning June 15.

These events are important to funnel cash toward local stores, politicians said, and shutting the L train would hurt their business.

State Sen. Daniel Squadron said these L train shutdowns were announced without first consulting the community.

“We understand that planned maintenance to the subway system is essential and shutdown dates will never be ideal, but it is very important that the MTA follow through on its commitment to community engagement and reschedule these shutdowns,” local politicians including Squadron wrote in a letter.

MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan signaled that the shutdowns would continue as planned.

“We are sorry for the inconvenience this creates for L train customers, but this is unavoidable and necessary work to keep the L train running smoothly,” he told Metro.

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In a surprise twist that will shock the world, or at least most of Brooklyn and some of Queens, a recent analysis of the MTA by the Straphangers Campaign found that the dreaded G train has the fewest delays of all the train lines.

So Brooklynites blaming failed relationships on the G may need to direct blame elsewhere — like its Park Slope companion, the F, which had the most delay alerts in the first ten months of 2012.

Less surprising was the discovery that delay alerts increased after Sandy, in a comparison of the first three months of 2012 with the first three months of 2013. The campaign largely focused on the first ten months of the year, to avoid confounding the results with the aftereffects of superstorm Sandy.

The study analyzed the MTA “electronic alerts,” which are sent out in realtime to warn riders of significant issues that lead to delays.

Straphangers only included delays that are deemed controllable by the MTA. As the MTA apparently does not record the duration of a delay, it was not possible to determine how long the delay lasted — so while the G train had the fewest delay alerts with 34, or one percent of a total 2,669, those 34 delays may have extended far longer than the F train’s, which comprised eight percent of the total 2,669.

The G is the MTA’s Most Improved Player, though: it had 19 percent fewer delay alerts in the first 10 months of 2012 than in the same time period in 2011, down from 42.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post F train is worse than the G train: study appeared first on Metro.us.

Sorry to break it to you, but nobody wants to date you if you live off the G train.

According to a report from DNAinfo, New Yorkers around the city are refusing to date their neighbors living off the dreaded G train, citing the train’s poor service as doom for relationships.

“I had to make a rule that was, literally, if you live off the G, you’re not for me,” Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Mutale Nkonde said. “To get to the G is such a monumental hike, it’s two buses plus a long walk.”

Nkonde, who lives off the A and C trains, complained that taking the G always required several transfers and often resulted in getting lost.

The short length of the train is also problematic, especially for women dressed up for a night out.

“The thing about the G is it comes in the middle of platform, so if you’re dressed in high heels you have to run what feels like 7 miles to catch the train,” Nkonde explained.

She also described the Myrtle-Willoughby station as “‘Law and Order’-ish.”

“It looks like a crime scene,” she said.

Christie Walsh recalled her relationship with a man in Greenpoint.

“I always refused to go there,” she said. “After a couple of punishing rides on the G train, I decided I wouldn’t do it.”

Walsh’s beau eventually moved to California.

“The funny thing is, I’d date someone in California, because I’d like to go to California,” Walsh said. “I’d never like to ride the G train.”

An MTA spokesperson reportedly declined to comment.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The police are looking for a man they say stole an iPad from a woman on a subway in March.

The suspect, described as a Hispanic male in his 20s, reportedly ripped the iPad from the hands of a 24-year-old woman on a northbound Q train as it was about the leave the 7th Avenue station in Brooklyn.

No one was injured.

Police believe the man was captured on surveillance camera. They estimate he is between 5-foot-8 and 5-foot-10 and approximately 170 pounds with short black hair.

The NYPD requests that anyone with information regarding this incident called their Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (5477).

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The NYPD will study how chemical gases might dissipate in city subways underground in a possible terror attack.

The test, conducted with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, will be the largest-ever study of the risks of airborne contaminants.

During three separate days in July, researchers will disperse harmless gases in 21 subway lines and at street level, tracking how they disperse.

Researchers said they will release the gases in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Manhattan from 59th Street to the Battery.

The gases will be perfluorocarbons, which pose no health or environmental threat, according to the NYPD.

Ultimately, the NYPD will use the data to decide how to best respond in such an emergency.

“The NYPD works for the best but plans for the worst when it comes to potentially catastrophic attacks such as ones employing radiological contaminants or weaponized anthrax,” Kelly said.

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There are individual videos for the subway, the bus system, the Long Island Railroad, and Metro-North.

The wise young ones note your likely reasons for opting to ride with the masses, citing the time and money saved and traffic avoided.

Occasionally they come up with a more specific reason.

“You did it because it’s fun to look out the window,” says one boy matter-of-factly in the bus video.

A triad of tiny scientists hold up wonky carbon dioxide models, informing the viewer of the 20 pounds of greenhouse gases the environment is being spared.

Ultimately, they all sweetly acknowledge your sacrifice for them (in the form of not burning up the planet they’re stuck living on longer than you will be).

“You did it for me,” a bow-tied young’un nods seriously.

According to the MTA, the longer the trip and the more congestion one would encounter by driving, the more greenhouse gas emissions are saved. So you can ride the train feeling smug about all the traffic you’re not sitting in for more reasons than one!

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday his pick for the new leader of the city’s transit agency.

Cuomo nominated Tom Prendergast for the role. He has been president of New York City Transit for three years.

Prendergast replaces Joe Lhota, who resigned to run for mayor. 

“I can’t imagine anyone having a better understanding of how the region’s vast system operates and the challenges that it faces,” Cuomo said.

Prendergast promised to improve riders’ experience and operate the system more efficiently. He also vowed to “rebuild smarter and better in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.”

The Senate must approve the confirmation.

Cuomo also announced a deal that secures $111 million for the MTA. An agreement between state transit agencies will save taxpayers and straphangers millions as the agency continues to recover from Sandy, he said.

State officials estimate that Sandy caused about $4.8 billion in damage to the MTA system, from saltwater corrosion to flooded tunnels.

The post Cuomo names Tom Prendergast as new MTA head appeared first on Metro.us.

City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn announced a plan on Thursday for a massive overhaul of the transit system.

The plan largely calls for a greater leadership role by the city, as well as expanded ferry, Metro-North, and bus service—but not subway expansion.

“We would love to be able to expand subway service, but that’s complicated, expensive, and time-consuming,” Quinn told Metro, emphasizing the importance of concrete, realistic steps “if we are going to meet the goal that I’ve articulated of making sure that no New Yorker has a commute time of over an hour.”

Quinn aims to cut commute times to an hour or less within the next decade.

In justifying the call for city control of the MTA, Quinn pointed out that city residents and workers contribute the vast majority of MTA funding.

“We know that 90 percent of the funding that ends up going to the MTA comes from the tolls, fare, and taxes of folks that are using, one way or another, the subways and the buses in the five boroughs,” she explained. “That makes us the economic engine of the MTA.”

But, she said, the board of the MTA doesn’t reflect that.

“We’re the engine, but we’ve got the voice of a piston,” she declared.

The answer, Quinn said, is for the mayor to have the authority to appoint not only the head of the MTA, but the majority of the board as well. Equally important, she added, is giving riders a voting member on the board, not just a ceremonial member.

The other major problem she called out is the way the lives of New Yorkers have outgrown the century-old system: it is no longer the case that the majority of jobs are in the central business district, for example.

“When this system was built, the majority of New Yorkers lived in Manhattan,” she said. “Its main function was to get people to jobs in Manhattan. That’s not the reality anymore.”

Though subway expansion is too ambitious an undertaking to see progress in the next decade, Quinn proposed several ways to extend transit in the five boroughs, from expanding ferry service to creating more Metro-North stops in the Bronx and Manhattan.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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There are certain feelings that come with riding the G train. Anger, frustration, exasperation and impatience all perfectly describe the experience. There’s a reason the only line that connects Brooklyn and Queens has been nicknamed “The Ghost Train.”

According to the MTA’s newly released 2012 ridership data, the G train had the largest percentage growth in average weekday ridership. The line grew 4.2 percent in popularity, which translates to about 2,000 riders per weekday.

Despite the surge in ridership, the lackluster service remains the same.

“The MTA’s new numbers show what G train riders already know. These trains are overcrowded, and we need to run more of them,” Riders Alliance Executive Director Josh Raskin said in a statement.

G trains do not run often, and because of that are usually packed.

“Service is not frequent enough to say to myself, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait for the next one.’ The next one could be 12 minutes away. I love my fellow Brooklynites, but I am tired of spending my mornings pressed up against them,” said Rider’s Alliance member Annemarie Caruso.

MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz released the following statement to Gothamist:

“We will of course use the latest ridership figures as we assess G Line service, but total ridership is only one of the elements we use to determine levels of service. Transit schedules are, in fact, based on ridership through the peak load point of a route at any given time, and these measurements are taken a minimum of three times each year. The last time we looked at ridership trends, the level of service on the G was sufficient, but we will continue to analyze.”

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

The post G train ridership grows, but service is still lacking appeared first on Metro.us.

A 23-year-old Florida man was struck and killed by an A train on the Upper West Side early Thursday morning.

Bobby Legrand Guin, of Mary Esther, Fl., was hit by a northbound A train at approximately 5:14 a.m. at the West 109th Street and Central Park West station, cops said. He was transported to St. Luke’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Police officers found some $20 bills in Guin’s hand and on the tracks, leading them to believe that the young man may have dropped the money and jumped down to retrieve it, The Daily News reports.

Guin had moved to New York to pursue a business career, the News reports. His family was notified of his death on Thursday.

The post 23-year-old man killed by train at Upper West Side station appeared first on Metro.us.

A man was struck and killed by an MTA bus Wednesday in front of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, according to police.

The victim was walking onto the street in between two parked cars when he was hit by an oncoming Q53 bus at approximately 7:36 p.m. The incident occurred in front of Elmhurst Hospital, where the victim was pronounced dead on arrival.

The bus remained on the scene. No arrests were made, and the investigation is ongoing.

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South Ferry subway riders will no longer have to walk to Rector Street to get the 1 train. Service was restored at the stop Thursday for the first time since Hurricane Sandy destroyed the station five months ago.

The MTA has restored the old South Ferry station, which has a smaller platform than what riders are used to. The new station will take two or three years to repair, the New York Post reports.

Restoring the century-old station cost about $2 million, the Post reports. Repairing the new station, which was just built in 2009, will cost about $600 million.

Approximately 10,000 riders use the South Ferry stop daily. The new station was flooded with 15 million gallons of water during the storm.

The post Old South Ferry station reopens appeared first on Metro.us.

The daughter of a man who was fatally pushed in front of a train will sue the MTA.

Ashley Han, daughter of Ki-Suk Han, filed a lawsuit against the MTA today, according to the New York Post.

The Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit alleges that the MTA did not keep the platform safe.

The family wants monetary damages, including funeral costs, according to the newspaper.

An MTA spokesman told Metro today that they would not comment on pending litigation.

Metro previously reported that his family had been considering a lawsuit.

The family’s attorney told Metro they were “distraught, shocked, upset” after Han’s death, which became citywide news after a New York Post photographer captured the moment.

Naeem Davis, 30, a homeless man, was charged with murder.

Han’s death prompted a conversation about how to prevent fatalities in the tracks, from some saying trains should move slower to others proposing platform doors.

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UPDATE: The station opening for 1 train service will be an old station at the South Ferry location.

Service for the train line will begin in the old station in the first week of April, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today.

The station was flooded 80 feet deep with about 15 million gallons of water, the governor added.

“The MTA has a long, tough job ahead as it tackles the immense job of virtually rebuilding the new South Ferry terminal station,” he said.

More work will still face the MTA at the station, including refurbishing platform edges and replacing pistons.

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A 15-year-old punched a subway conductor in the face, according to a report.

The Daily News reports that a student, 15, hit a subway conductor after the conductor asked a group of teens to stop banging on the conductor’s cab.

The Lincoln High School group of students were on a Q train Thursday afternoon, according to the newspaper.

The 15-year-old was arrested and charged with assault, and the MTA worker was treated for a split lip.

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Police are investigating after a pedestrian was struck and killed by an MTA bus Thursday evening in the Oakland Gardens neighborhood of Queens.

The victim, 55, was hit near the intersection of 73rd Avenue and Springfield Boulevard at around 7:30 p.m, police said. The QM3 bus was traveling west on 73rd Avenue and making a left-hand turn onto Springfield Boulevard when the rear end of the bus struck the victim. She was taken to Long Island Jewish Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

The victim’s identity has not been released and the investigation is ongoing.

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Transit advocacy group Straphangers Campaign recently released the results of a survey conducted between May 28 and August 10 of last year, analyzing the “state” of 251 subway platforms at 120 stations. 

The survey, conducted by 13 interns and staff, found several areas of improvement: the number of garbage bags left on stations was down, as was the number of staircases in disrepair, exposed wires, cracks in the floors, and broken lights.

The platforms scored almost 100 percent on the presence of garbage cans and the absence of overflowing garbage cans.

But while those physical conditions were better than or as good as the survey the year before found, the appearance of some platforms had worsened when it came to water damage — well before superstorm Sandy wrecked havoc throughout the subway system.

“Substantial graffiti” was found at 27 percent of all platforms, up from 20 percent in 2011.

The Campaign said the platforms they surveyed were nearly identical to the randomly selected platforms surveyed in the first iteration of the “State of the Subway Platform” in 2011. Surveyors visited the platforms on weekdays between the morning and evening rush hours.

The 251 platforms they looked at made up 28 percent of all 909 platforms city-wide.

The survey also found that subway riders have a one in 10 chance of spotting a rat over the course of their commute.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post ‘State of the Subway Platform’: OK, not great appeared first on Metro.us.

Do stories of your long commute that usually begin with the phrase “You’ll never believe what happened today on the subway…” dominate your conversations? Do you and your buddies discuss who has the hardest commute? What’s worse, taking the Staten Island Ferry to work every morning or having to switch from the N to the 7 to the G to get from Astoria to Greenpoint?

According to the Census New Yorkers take the prize for longest commute time.

WNYC released a map to help shed some light on just how long the commutes are.

The map, based on census data, is pretty much what you would expect. Residents of lower Manhattan have a fairly short commute compared to those who live in places like LIC and Bay Ridge.

Are you jealous of your Financial District friends that have a 10-15 minute commute, or would you never give up your Park Slope apartment despite having a 38 minute long commute?

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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The post MTA completes blasting for Second Avenue Subway Line appeared first on Metro.us.

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  View Video

  MTA completes blasting for Second Avenue Subway Line

The final blast, finishing the work clearing space for a future elevator entrance, occurred at approximately 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 28, the MTA said.

Drilling and blasting for the 72nd Street Station began on January 18, 2011.

Its completion has come through the work of nearly 500 laborers working 24 hours a day, five days a week.

They removed a total of 183,000 cubic yards of rock, which the MTA said is the equivalent to the volume covered by 500 city avenue blocks 10 feet high, or more than half the Empire State Building.

The Second Avenue Subway line will extend the Q line, and is the largest expansion of the subway system in generations, according to the MTA. The subway line will have new stations at 72nd Street, 86th Street and 96th Street, and is expected to open in December 2016. The MTA estimates its cost at $4.45 billion.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The MTA is poised to go after rats where it hurts them the most.

With traps and poisons proving insufficient, the transit authority confirmed Sunday that it will test out a new birth-control bait designed to permanently sterilize the ubiquitous rodents.

“We want to find out if this will work,” said MTA spokeswoman Judie Glave. “It’s not going in a subway station. It’s going to be in a non-public space within the system.”

She did not offer a specific timeline, other than to say it will happen sometime this year.

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the birth-control bait would induce early-onset menopause in rats. Funding for the pilot project comes entirely from the National Institutes of Health.

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Angry straphangers have launched a campaign in an attempt to “swipe back” at the MTA for raising fares.

The “No Fare Hikes” campaign is encouraging riders with Unlimited MetroCards to swipe other riders through the turnstiles for free as a way to protest fare hikes. The action is legal.

The campaign’s website says: “If you use your unlimited card to swipe someone else in, then you’re effectively helping them boycott the fare hike.”

Campaigners are broadcasting their message via fliers and Twitter. They are also handing out “swipe back!” buttons.

MTA fare hikes go into effect this weekend. The fare for a single subway or bus ride goes up from $2.25 to $2.50 beginning at 12 a.m. on Sunday. An unlimited MetroCard will go up from $104 to $112.

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Another MTA fare hike is in store for New Yorkers beginning this weekend. Prices are going up for all New York City subways and buses, as well as tolls for bridges and tunnels and fares for the Long Island Railroad and Metro-North.

Beginning 12 a.m. on Sunday, the price of a single subway or bus ride will go up from $2.25 to $2.50. A monthly MetroCard will go up from $104 to $112. A 7-day unlimited MetroCard will cost $30, up from $29. The pay-per-ride bonus discount is also being reduced, from 7 percent to 5 percent.

For express buses, the cost of one ride goes up from $5.50 to $6.00. The 7-day express bus plus MetroCard will cost $55, up from $50.

Higher tolls also go into effect on Sunday, with tolls at most bridges and tunnels going up from $4.80 to $5.33 for E-ZPass customers, and from $6.50 to $7.50 for those paying cash.

Long Island Railroad and Metro-North customers will have to shell out more money beginning Friday, with fares increasing by between 8.2 percent and 9.3 percent.

The MTA announced the fare hike proposals in October, citing need for additional revenue to fill its budget deficit.

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A man jumped in front of an E train this morning, according to reports.

The man, who survived, joined a sad string of people jumping in front of trains recently.

According to the Daily News, he was the eighth person injured or killed by a train since Wednesday.

He reportedly jumped in front of a train at the Northern Boulevard Station in Queens around 5:30 a.m.

The train was headed toward Manhattan.

The man is in serious condition.

Last month, the City Council called an emergency hearing to respond to a number of train-station injuries.

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