MTA

Yesterday, we reported on the impressive gains in speed and ridership along the First and Second Avenue Select Bus Service route. Since then, NYC DOT and the MTA released their official progress report on the project. It's full of graphics that show the boost for bus riders even more clearly.

Last week’s news that NYC Transit is planning to boost L train service isn’t just good for residents of Williamsburg. It points to a new era of faster and more reliable service throughout the subway system as the new signal technology known as Communications Based Train Control (CBTC) begins to take hold.

After Saturday’s arrest of 700 Occupy Wall Street protestors, the New York Police Department ordered bus drivers to go to the Brooklyn Bridge, and transport protestors to police facilities for holding and processing.

With Select Bus Service speeding trips and boosting ridership on Fordham Road and First and Second Avenue, the next route slated for an upgrade is Brooklyn's Nostrand Avenue. The B44 bus runs over nine miles from the Williamsburg Bridge to Sheepshead Bay. It attracts 41,000 riders a day, making it the seventh busiest route in the city, despite running at an average speed or seven or eight miles per hour and having the least reliable service in the borough. Last night, the Department of Transportation and MTA held an open house to present an updated design for the corridor [PDF], one of the final revisions before construction begins next year.

When it comes to Staten Island, the Department of Transportation and MTA are considering a different model for Select Bus Service.

The idea of increasing state funding for the MTA is popular in New York City, according to a new Quinnipiac poll released yesterday. Looking at the MTA service region -- NYC plus its suburbs -- more people want to see additional funding going to transit. Statewide, support for increased MTA funding is slightly lower than opposition, but that may not matter much: In recent legislative battles over transit funding, upstate representatives have deferred to representatives from the NYC region.

Last week, the city's Independent Budget Office released a report on the MTA's revenue structure [PDF] which has been getting a bit of play. At Second Avenue Sagas, Ben Kabak focused on the report's main thesis: that the volatility of dedicated taxes and fees threatens the financial stability of the transit agency. Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign picked out a graph showing that the recently enacted payroll mobility tax already makes up 30 percent of all dedicated revenues, or around one-eighth of all operating revenue.

Who's up for the challenge of managing the nation's biggest transit system at a time when state government has left it with a pile of debt and two already-scheduled fare hikes? The person who takes over the MTA from Jay Walder after his resignation takes effect October 21 will have the marquee transit job in the United States, but also perhaps the most difficult.

Can you spot the flaw in this excerpt from the New York Times' Saturday backgrounder on MTA chief Jay Walder’s pending departure for Hong Kong?