Newsday

08-29-1995

The transit bosses will usher in a new and ugly era next Sunday when they cut back service on subway lines and bus routes all across the city. To make this even worse, millions of riders are already dreading the second half of what critics call transit's "double whammy" - a proposed 25-cent fare hike that is the biggest in city history. The increase would take effect Nov. 1. "It's an unfortunate confluence of events," concedes Alex Friedlander, senior director of scheduling for the Transit Authority. "They think they can fool all of the people all of the time," says Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. He adds: "In the 16 years I have been involved with transit, these are the biggest service cuts of all." The radical cuts will mean the death of the Dean Street subway station in Brooklyn, the end of all-night service on the Grand Central shuttle, elimination of two stops on the lesser-known Lenox shuttle in upper Manhattan, and the substitution of bus service there. Several token booths will be closed, and there will be bigger crowds inside our buses and subways. Beyond the harsh cutbacks and the proposed $1.50 fare, the system faces a hidden series of layoffs. And these, if carried out, will result in a dirtier and more accident-prone subway. By next year, the number of subway-car cleaners will be reduced by 200, and there will be about 170 fewer people cleaning and painting subway stations. There will be steep reductions in the number of people who maintain subway signals - despite three crashes in the past seven months. "They're going to put the thing into the toilet," says David Gunn, who ran the TA for six years, 1984-1990, and who is now managing the Toronto subway system. Our own subway is still regarded as a nonpareil engineering marvel, the largest rapid-transit system in the world - one that carries 3 1/2 million riders each day. The buses carry another 1.5 million. The city's subways ought to be beyond the reach of politicians, who seldom endure the hardships of the average Joe or Jane. Many of these riders have to go to work on trains and buses from the far reaches of the outer boroughs in which they live. But the system has become a whipping boy for budget-beset political leaders like Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki. They like to divert public attention from their decisions to amputate parts of the system - and they do this by blaming the faceless bureaucrats who run the MTA and the TA. And so Sunday will be the day New Yorkers have dreaded since last February, when transit bosses said parts of the system would have to be put on the chopping block. These cutbacks will continue through the next few weeks. The Dean Street station on the Franklin Avenue shuttle will close Sept. 10 - the first time in decades that a subway station has been closed in this city. "They put that station to death a long time ago by neglecting it," says Tina Miller, a 49-year-old mother of three who has lived on Dean Street all her life. She thinks the station closing presages the death of the entire five-stop shuttle line. She says closing the station - which she used as a schoolgirl - means she will have to walk four blocks through an unsafe neighborhood to get a train to work. "This is a real blow to me," said Miller, who is head of the Dean Street Block Association. "The city has raised the white flag of surrender," says Joe Rappaport of the Straphangers Campaign. He is hoping public outrage will lower the fare hike from the currently proposed 25 cents. Public anger has prevailed at least once in the recent past. It was credited with beating back a city plan to take away free passes from students at both public and private schools. The passes have been extended for another year. Friedlander says the cutbacks on bus and subway lines "will be in all five boroughs," and he notes that waits during rush hour will rise by one to two minutes - and will hit five minutes during off-peak hours. But he admits the longer waits mean more crowds to contend with. "On the 7 line in Queens," he says, "it will mean that instead of the average of 34 standees at rush hour, there will now be 42." And he adds that even though the Grand Central shuttle will be closed from midnight to 6 a.m. beginning Sunday, "riders can still take the 7 line." All lines are not equal, however, and riders know that the deeper they go into the system, the more likely they are to run into predators. "We tried to target the weak links in the system," says Friedlander, a 27-year TA veteran, "so as to minimize the pain." No one can tell already-harried bus and subway riders about pain. They experience it every day. But during the relatively good times of the past decade, there have actually been graffiti-free trains and buses. Not to mention improved on-time performance. Still, riders haven't been lulled into an ersatz sense of well-being. The men and women whose lot it is to ride the buses and trains to work have no recourse - no limos, no police escorts, no padded seats. And now, the final insult. They will have to pay more to get less. Maybe you can fool all of the people all of the time.