New York City Transit Authority

New York City Transit Authority
The New York City Transit Authority (trading as MTA New York City Bus/Subway and Access-A-Ride) provides bus, subway, and paratransit service throughout New York City.
Info
Owner	Metropolitan Transportation Authority (bus) City of New York (subway)
Locale	New York City
Transit type	Subways , Buses and BRT
Number of lines	243 bus 23 subway[1]
Chief executive	Thomas Prendergrast
Headquarters	130 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Operation
Began operation	1953
Operator(s)	MTA Regional Bus Operations (bus) MTA NYC Subway (subway) SIRTOA (Staten Island)
Number of vehicles	4597 buses[2] (2007) 6388 subway cars

The New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) is a public authority in the U.S. state of New York that operates public transportation in New York City. Part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the busiest and largest transit system in North America,^[3] the NYCTA has a daily ridership of 7 million trips (over 2 billion annually).^[4]

The NYCTA operates the following systems:

• New York City Subway, a rapid transit system in Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
• Staten Island Railway, a rapid transit line in Staten Island (operated by the Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority, a NYCTA subsidiary)
• NYCTA Department of Buses, a bus network serving all five boroughs, now operated under MTA Regional Bus Operations with NYC Transit personnel.

Overview

Name

As part of establishing a common corporate identity, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1994 assigned popular names to each of its subsidiaries and affiliates. The New York City Transit Authority is now known popularly as MTA New York City Transit (NYCT), (or more specifically on the vehicles, MTA New York City Bus and MTA New York City Subway), though the former remains its legal name for documents and contracts. Newer contracts and RFPs, however, have also used the popular name.^[5]

The Authority is also sometimes referred to as NYCT (for New York City Transit), or simply the TA (for Transit Authority).

Management structure

The Chairman and Members of the MTA, by statute, also serve as the Chairman and Members of the Transit Authority, and serve as the Directors of the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority. The Executive Director of the MTA is, ex officio, Executive Director of the Transit Authority.

Headquarters in Brooklyn

The Transit Authority has its own management structure which is responsible for its day-to-day operations, with executive personnel reporting to the President of NYCTA. The current NYCTA president is Thomas Prendergrast.

History

The subway system was originally three separate systems that were in competition with one another. Two of them were built and operated by private companies, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of August Belmont (IRT) and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). The public Independent City-Owned Rapid Transit Railroad (IND) was built by the City of New York and opened in sections beginning in 1932. The IRT and BMT systems were acquired by the city in 1940 after they went bankrupt. All of the subways are now owned by New York City and leased to the Transit Authority for operation.

R33 car painted in its original livery

The Transit Authority, a public benefit corporation, was created in 1953 pursuant to Title 9 of Article 5 of the Public Authorities Law, as amended (the "TA Act"), for the purposes of acquiring the transit facilities then operated by the City and operating them "for the convenience and safety of the public." These facilities included the surface lines (buses and, until 1956, streetcars) and the IRT, BMT, and IND subways; before that date these services were managed by New York City's Board of Transportation. A major impetus of the formation of the NYCTA was to remove transit policy, and especially the setting of the transit fare, from City politics.^{[citation needed]}

As with all public transportation in the U.S., the TA requires assistance for its capital costs and to cover operational needs, however, the very high ridership of New York City's subway system has enabled it to pay 67% of its operating costs from fares and advertising.^[6] Historically, the TA's capital requirements were met by the city and state jointly, but this support was withdrawn, primarily by Governor Rockefeller, in the 1960s.

In 1968 the NYCTA, and its subsidiary, the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority (MaBSTOA), were placed under the control of, and are now affiliates of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a public benefit corporation chartered by the New York State Legislature in 1965.^{[citation needed]}

Trip Planner

In December 2006, MTA New York City Transit launched Trip Planner, its online travel itinerary service. Trip Planner offers users customized subway, bus, and walking directions within all five boroughs of New York City, as well as service alerts and service advisories for planned track work. The service was developed and is maintained by NYC Transit with the assistance of Technology and Information Services and its outside vendor Trapeze. It is accessed through the official website of the MTA.

Similar to MapQuest, which offers driving directions, Trip Planner provides search fields for starting address and destination address, and allows end users to navigate the complexity of the subway and bus system by narrowing their options to subway, local bus or express bus only, minimizing the number of transfers or time, and adjusting the walking distance to and from the transit stop.

In October 2007 NYCT unveiled an addition to the Trip Planner site when it launched Trip Planner On the Go! This service allows users with mobile access to the web to obtain travel itineraries while away from a desk or laptop computer. Trip Planner On the Go! was made applicable for cellular phone, PDA, or Blackberry users, and offered the same three-option travel directions along with real-time service alerts. The back end programming for On the Go! was “developed using XHTML technology and the latest Microsoft Dot Net Framework in a clustered environment.” By the end of October 2007, NYCT boasted more than 5,000 daily customers using Trip Planner.

In February 2008 NYCT announced an upgrade to the mapping system using NAVTEQ and Microsoft Virtual Earth software similar to mapping sites such as Google Maps and MapQuest. The new software offered more accurate street grids, included business and points of interest, and allowed users to view the maps in aerial, and 3-D points of view. To date, the aerial and 3-D views are not available on Trip Planner’s mobile service.

In June 2008 NYCT announced it had reached 10,000 daily visitors to Trip Planner. Since the announcement, the number of visits to the service eclipsed the number of telephone calls to the agency’s travel information hotline. The following month, TIS launched Trip Planner as a widget application, allowing users to download the service and add it to their personalized homepage, blog, or website.

The Trip Planner has since largely replaced the NYCTA call center on NYC Transit's phone number.

Strikes

The original livery for NYC Transit Authority buses, used until the 1970s, when the blue stripe was introduced.

On New Year's Day, in 1966, a 12-day strike was started with the aid of Michael J. "Mike" Quill. This strike started after the union member's contracts had expired, and with large economic demands from the union. After the 1966 New York City transit strike, the Taylor Law was passed making public employee strikes illegal in the state of New York.

Despite the Taylor Law, there was still an 11-day strike in 1980. 34,000 union members struck in order to call for increased wages.

On December 20, 2005, another strike occurred. Workers walked off at 3 a.m. and the NYCTA stopped operating. Later that day, State Justice Theodore Jones fined and warned the transit union that there would be a fine of $1 million for each day the TA is shut down. Also for each day the workers missed during the strike they would be fined two days pay. The workers are members of the Transport Workers Union of America Local 100.

At 2:35 p.m. on December 22, TWU Local 100 had told members to report to work immediately[1], even though no contract agreement had been reached. By late afternoon, the strike was over and bus service resumed in the evening and subway service in the morning of the December 23. The TWU membership rejected the proposed contract by 7 votes followed by the MTA Board of Directors, sitting as the Transit Authority board, repudiating the contract proposal. After a second vote by the union, the contract was approved by the union membership. The original contract proposed by the Transit Authority before the strike was ultimately imposed on both parties by a state mediator.

New York City Transit Learning Center, Brooklyn

See also

• New York City transit fares
• MetroCard (New York City)

References

External links

• New York City Transit: official site
• nycsubway.org: New York City Subway Resources
• Transport Workers Union Local 100
• New York City Transit: Trip Planner site

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