Jay-Oh

As long as you’re obeying the speed restriction (if there is one) before the station you’re fine. They do have people at certain stations with radars to check. If you get caught you might get a reinstruction or verbal critique.

So what are you nervous about?

Let’s stop discouraging the newbies please.

Just relax. As long as you apply yourself, listen to your instructors and study, you’ll be fine. Schoolcar was probably the most fun I’ve had in transit to date. Just hope you have good classmates and learn to help each other out.

^ This. It may not work for everyone, but I made it a habit use a flash card and practice reciting 5 to 10 random signal definitions out loud verbatim. If I got it wrong, I “punished” myself by writing down the definition by hand each time. I did this everyday after schoolcar when I got home. If you really want it; you’ll find a way to memorize and pass.

It may be easy, but some people underestimate the test and don’t fully apply themselves. That’s how they fail. I just wanted to make sure that the advice we give to new prospects be sound and beneficial. I will always tell them to strive for perfection when it comes to the signal test, because if they are reassured on the ease of it, they might end up slacking.

Just remember to study them everyday from beginning of schoolcar to end. You’ll be fine if you do that.

I’m going to disagree. Yes, you get a chance to clarify the meaning to a superintendent if you don’t put down the correct wording on the test. However; saying they won’t get fired if they get it wrong is incorrect. I have people in my induction that got termed because they got signals wrong on the test, and then got it wrong again when asked to clarify verbally to the Supt.

Username checks out lmao.

Yes generally some people do that.

Those days will still be your RDO’s, so you will not get paid for it. You will be paid for your normal working days of Sun-Tue & Fri-Sat. Then you resume working on the Sunday after. Welcome to transit.

1. 2 weeks 2. They will dartboard 2 weeks out of whatever is left available. 3. Your vacation weeks will start the Sunday of that week, so no, it won’t work out like that unless you have S/S off. If you have W/T off the week before; you’ll end up working Sun-Tue - RDO/RDO - work Fri-Sat, then time off starts from Sun to Sat of your vacation week.

All I’m saying is; your job is not to test those timers, that’s for the Speed unit to worry about. Your job is to do your assigned trips without incident, sign out, go home. You’re not going to get into trouble for being slightly slower than other people. The job is very easy to keep and it is rather tough to get fired assuming you do what you’re supposed to and follow the rules.

My favorite on the A is the timer when you’re going down Fulton express s/b after Hoyt. You couldn’t hit that timer if you tried.

He/She can, but I believe they’re also still under probation. It’s probably best to avoid testing timers until they’re fully past probation. Yes, you’re right - optimal operations bulletins will save you if you hit slow timers, but that’s if they believe that you weren’t speeding. If they don’t, they’ll send the Speed unit out to test the timer and replicate the speed at which you hit it. If you said you were doing posted speed, they will do posted speed; and if they don’t hit that timer, they’re gonna discipline you. It’s also best practice to do 2-5 mph under the posted speed not just because of some timers being slow, but because the speedometers can sometimes be calibrated differently. If it says you’re doing 25, you could actually be doing 27. At the end of the day, you’re not going to lose time doing 2-5 mph less than the posted timer speed.

- I don’t know, I made it out of probation without incident so I can’t really say. -Chances are you’d start getting more and more days in the street along with those dans until they eventually tell you you’re on your last strike or they’d fire you by then. I knew someone who got termed after 3 strikes. -Not that I know of? -2 Broadway is where you go for disciplinary shit. 130 Livingston does not compare. 2 broadway is where you’ll see people sitting on the bench wringing their hands.

^ This. Essentially a write up. Trust me when I tell you that you want as clean of a record as possible, because things DO happen down here. You could’ve made a mistake and misjudged the distance or speed, or maybe it was something completely out of your control. They take your past incidents, or the lack thereof, into account when it comes to discipline, especially when you’re on probation.

Just remember, lying will make things 10x worse. Do your job how you’re taught to do it, and you shouldn’t have too much trouble down here. If you try to conceal a mistake and get caught, what could’ve been a simple undocumented slap on the wrist can quickly turn into days in the street and a DAN on your record.

You’ll be looking somewhere around $88-100k gross with moderate overtime. Here’s the thing about year 1 - 2, you will get assigned non-negotiable overtime anyway as XX, so chances are you’ll be making pretty decent money starting off. I’m not an overtime guy, I have other ways of making extra scratch outside of transit, but my classmates who really jumped into late clears and working RDO’s during XX hit something like 110k his first year. Don’t believe the general misconception that every MTA worker is stealing overtime and making $200k/year. You’ll have to work for those 6 figures.

Not much, even if you’re running hot they’ll just hold you at gap stations anyway. It’s honestly more of an adrenaline / skill test thing than anything else in my opinion. Transit doesn’t pay me more to be fast; if anything it helps them justify cutting jobs.

You can actually go further than that before taking a brake depending on the train, but for the sanity of the new people, it’s always best to brake when comfortable and adjust from there.

Congratulations. Keep it smooth and safe out there. I’m hearing of a lot of incidents where new T/O’s are getting taken out of service left and right for incidents.

Depends on which division you choose / chooses you. The main learning center is located in Brooklyn. Then after that you’ll be traveling to the divisional yards in each borough. B division - Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx A division - Brooklyn, Bronx.

Before resigning - try talking to your TSS’ and get in contact with Supt James, I think he’s the one running schoolcar at the moment. See if there’s a chance they could place you into a later class. Example; one of my classmates had a family emergency, we were a December class, they reassigned them to a February class. We were maybe 4 weeks into the class already.

I don’t think you need to be a C/R. I know that people in certain other departments need to take TA provided classes that certify them to take the T/O exam. I know of around 2 station agents who are in those classes atm.