DUMB TRACK MIND
Rahm touts Chicago trains, but AT LEAST our riders don’t get SHOT on the way home!
CONGRATULATIONS to Chicago for having a transit system that’s so popular with its passengers.
Now try getting them home without anyone getting shot.
That’s the message New Yorkers had Monday for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who threw New York’s subway system under the bus while touting the Windy City’s mass transit approval rating.
While straphangers from Dyckman St. to Ditmas Ave. were swiping their MetroCards, Emanuel took a swipe at New York City in an off-the-rails column about the Big Apple’s mass transit woes.
In an Op-Ed for The New York Times Monday, Emanuel puffed his chest out about Chicago’s famed L (short for elevated), boasting of an 85% approval rating that is as high as the Windy City’s elevated tracks.
Chicago’s transit success, Emanuel said, is the result of prioritizing maintenance, a mayor who’s directly accountable for service, and money from the federal government.
But Emanuel wasn’t satisfied with just patting himself on the back. He had to tie New York and Washington to the tracks and rumble his railroad over his rival cities.
“Last year, more than 238 million rides were taken on the system, which, unlike the ones in New York and Washington, has not been troubled by systemic failures, breakdowns and delays,” Emanuel wrote. “How have we done it? First, we put reliability ahead of expansion.”
What Emanuel leaves out is that the Second City is a distant second when it comes to moving passengers.
New York logged nearly 1.8 billion rides last year, two-thirds of which were on time, according to MTA data.
Just those 1.2 billion on-time trips are more than five times what the entire Chicago L system moves in a year, a point echoed by MTA Chairman Joe Lhota, who said Emanuel should focus on his city’s problems.
“New York’s system has eight times the number of riders, triple the number of track miles and actually fully operates 24 hours a day,” Lhota said in a statement.
“We’re undergoing a top-to-bottom review, but make no mistake, we must do maintenance and system expansion to underserved communities at the same time it’s part of the reason New York City’s population rapidly grows while Chicago’s shrinks.
“The mayor of Chicago would seem to have enough of his own problems to focus on without trying to save face by capitalizing on someone else’s crisis.”
Lhota (photo) appears to have been making a not-so-veiled reference to Chicago’s out-of-control homicide rate, a cycle of violence that earned the city the nickname “Chiraq.”
Through the first six months of the year, there were 126 murders in New York City compared to 323 murders in Chicago. New York City’s population is 8.5 million; Chicago’s is 2.7 million.
Even the MTA’s most frustrated riders took offense to the Chicago mayor’s meddling.
“I don’t think he knows enough about the city,” said Jamie Nadeau, 29, a college administrator from Bronxville, Westchester County.
“Chicago has got a lot of issues, too. He shouldn’t be picking fights.”
Nadeau said he took the L while in Chicago 18 months ago, and although he said it was less crowded, he noted the system was just a fraction of the size of New York’s.
Marco Repola, 41, a consultant from DUMBO, Brooklyn, said he avoids the subway in favor of CitiBike, but he said Rahm was way off base.
“I’m a New Yorker, so obviously I have to defend New York,” Repola said.
As for the L’s success, Emanuel credits decisions to put money into modernizing tracks, signals and train cars — necessary work ahead of new lines.
Chicago’s system is rebuilding four of its seven rail lines, and expects that by 2019 half of its tracks will be new.
“We focused relentlessly on modernizing tracks, signals, switches, stations and cars before extending lines to new destinations,” Emanuel wrote.
“Unlike New York, which has spent billions to reach Hudson Yards, or Washington, which has concentrated on trying to reach Dulles Airport (both laudable projects), Chicago has improved the existing system.”
The other reason for Chicago’s success, according to Emanuel? There’s no question who’s in charge.
At the MTA, a CEO, Lhota, runs the show, with oversight by an independent board.
Gov. Cuomo — who controls the MTA and picks its leadership — wields immense influence over the agency and its spending. Still, he has in the past tried to dodge responsibility for the sorry state of the subway. Mayor de Blasio, who has four voting members on the MTA board, has also tried to avoid responsibility, reminding frustrated commuters that it’s the state that runs transportation. “Chicago riders have closer contact with the person whose job it is to make the trains run on time: the mayor,” Emanuel wrote. De Blasio spokesman Ben Sarle said in a statement that there was no effort to bring the subways or the MTA under city control.
“New Yorkers deserve a transit system we can rely on,” Sarle said.
“While city control isn’t on the immediate horizon, we are open to exploring options down the line that will help New Yorkers and fix our deteriorating subways.”
Last week, 34 passengers were hurt when a packed southbound A train derailed and slammed into a tunnel wall near Harlem’s 125th St. station as the morning rush hour came to a close.
Other delays have gotten so bad that riders have begun getting off stuck trains and walking through dark tunnels past a live third rail.
For all its problems, New York’s subway system still commanded a 72% satisfactory rating last year in an MTA survey — the lowest rating it has received since 2010.