Burrstone Posted July 10, 2013 Share #1 Posted July 10, 2013 Came across this today, can't paste it because it breaks up at the weirdest spots like in between words... but here's the link to the PDF.... http://www.pwfinance.net/document/research_reprints/-8%20Veolia%20Solves.pdf Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PinePower Posted July 10, 2013 Share #2 Posted July 10, 2013 Interesting for sure. Unfortunately the has become loaded with politIcal appointees which generally focus on NYC, but also lack a transit background. NICE had some growing pains but they seem to be doing abit better now, though I still vehemently think their n27 weekend mess needs to be fixed by returning the n27 to Roosevelt Field. The n27 was never a low ridership route and had good patronage 7 days a week, by reducing it to the Roslyn-Glen Cove shuttle it has extended trips by up to an hour. Ridership from Glen Cove has dropped on weekends, since few want to deal with missing their connection in Roslyn and have to wait another hour, only to have to stand on a packed n23. I'm hoping the fall changes will see the n27 run a midday service pattern on weekends (that is hourly n27 between Roosevelt Field and Glen Cove, with n23 being Manorhaven - HTC). can be more cost effective if they didn't have so many chiefs, so to speak. Originally it was supposed to be an RBA, now it sounds like even the may look into contracting out some of it's bus routes, maybe express buses since they lose the most money. Christine Quinn wants the city to take back the subways and buses which is a terrible idea IMO. Could LIB have worked out in the end? Yes it could have, if Nassau came up with more money to support it's bus service, in exchange for the MTA to reduce it's wasteful management costs, but it never happened, and they are gone, and we have to accept that. I think Nassau needs to bring it's service quality up to Bee-Line, but it will take more time, NICE inherited a poorly maintained fleet, in particular the Orion V's, which will have to be replaced soon enough. I still think Nassau needs to put more money into it's bus budget, and with an upcoming County Executive election, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, the candidates say about funding bus service. Suozzi fans will surely be dissapointed as he was no angel, in fact the MTA had proposed something similar under his watch, but the state came through with stopgap funding. The reductions to bus funding started toward the end of Gulotta's term, continued under Suozzi, and Mangano. It's never easy or pretty to clean up a fiscal mess, but waste is something that always needs to be looked at. The problem with the in a nutshell is too many chiefs, and many (like Helena Williams) are incompetent political hacks with no transportation background. It's like the CEO of McDonald's not knowing how to make a Big Mac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FamousNYLover Posted July 10, 2013 Share #3 Posted July 10, 2013 Interesting. Little off-topic, I heard in the old days, there were no bus schedules and buses are on double-zone fare and bus drivers were meant. Did it happened during old days when LIB was private bus company operation before MTA took them in? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vistausss Posted July 10, 2013 Share #4 Posted July 10, 2013 Well, Helena Williams doesn't seem that incompetent to me. I'm not saying she's doing a perfect job with LIRR but you could get worse people than her. Anyway: NICE needs to stay, LIB doesn't need to come back. NICE needs to restore n27 to RFM and needs to get more money out of the county. If those two things happen then it'll be a lot better for all the residents. (oh yeah, and not to forget: bus priority lights or at the very least a better traffic flow, to up the OTP) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrstone Posted July 10, 2013 Author Share #5 Posted July 10, 2013 The problem with the in a nutshell is too many chiefs, and many (like Helena Williams) are incompetent political hacks with no transportation background. It's like the CEO of McDonald's not knowing how to make a Big Mac. That is a good point, politicians are appointed to run the whereas the CEO and COO of NICE Bus have decades of industry experience. Well, Helena Williams doesn't seem that incompetent to me. I'm not saying she's doing a perfect job with LIRR but you could get worse people than her. I have now been praying for the last two years that Veolia would take over the LIRR and give riders a break on the fare, at least. Go check out what the LIRR charges people by searching between stations at lirr42.mta.info it is outragous! Especially for the service offered, commuting on the LIRR is hell I don't know how people do it every day (I couldn't do it, every day that's for sure). Trains may not be late like buses (then again trains aren't sitting in traffic with shitty lights that probably haven't been resynchronized in years) BUT when something goes wrong on the LIRR it goes WRONG! You're talking about massive delays and people packed into trains like sardines. I remember after the Amtrak derailment in the East River Tunnel last year (?) how bad the delays were for days. I had to go to lower Manhattan and decided to take the train to Atlantic terminal Brooklyn to the to Manhattan thinking I'd beat the delays, I guess a lot of other people did the same. I left an hour and 40 minutes earlier than I normally would and I just made it to where I need to be on time. It was raining, I don't why rain delays the LIRR, ever since they installed the new "state of the art" signals they've started having signal problems delaying trains when it trains. Some guy said to a conductor (in a very professional way that the LIRR doesn't have a strategic plan for when things go wrong, that every big corporation will have a plan for when ANYTHING happens but the just assumes everything will be fine and when something happens the big wigs start running like chickens with their heads cut off. This guy and the conductor were talking fir a few minutes and ended with the guy saying "look, this is not your fault, not even the 's fault it was an Amtrak train that derailed but it is your fault for not having a plan. Now everyone is going to be late because of signal problems, that is the LIRR's fault, this is exactly why my boss doesn't want to hire anyone else from Long Island, because the LIRR is unreliable which makes them unreliable..." (which is so true!) The conductor says with a big smile on his face "It's the LIRR, what'ya gonna do?" And walks to the door with a big smile on face looking out the window for the next 20 minutes. Why should be give a shit, he's already at work collecting a fat check, f uck the 1,000 people on the train who are risking losing their jobs because the can't get it together. I was talking to Grandma about the LIRR a few months ago and she told me that when she used to commute everyday from Long Island to Brooklyn for work the trains ran like clock work and never had these massive delays like we experience now. The trains and technology have only gotten better and more sophisticated, so what happened? Just to point out, that paper says it was written last September. Well, between then and the first few months of this year, ridership suffered that horrific drop where it's at its lowest point since 1998. Yes, it was written ten months ago but still has many relevant topics, facts, and statistics that I don't think many of knew before. I wish I found this ten months ago when everyone was saying "if Nassau only paid" well Nassau paid $156 Million in 2011 and the wanted $30 million more in 2012 and $50 million more in 2013! I will paste the facts I found very interesting son, haven't had time.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vistausss Posted July 10, 2013 Share #6 Posted July 10, 2013 Yeah, but no rail company is ever gonna provide fantastic service. If I'd get a nickel for everytime the Dutch Railways screw up I'd be living in an expensive condo in Garden City right now while driving to the supermarket with Mangano's limo every day. (not that I like Mangano but you get the point) Veolia does a lot better here but that's because their service area is way smaller. It's true though that if Veolia takes over LIRR the fare would be better and the service would probably be increased on the important lines. Also, Veolia would probably get some jobs done faster too like double-tracking the Main Line for example. (Btw: that conductor was wrong. The Dutch Railways are quite a big corporation (because next to the 85% of The Netherlands they also have subsidiaries in foreign countries) and they don't have backup plans either. They just assume everything goes alright and then when something goes wrong trains are either not running or beyond SRO packed...) I dunno about Veolia's backup plans but they probably will figure something out. Especially when part of their service (assuming they buy the LIRR one day) is through Nassau Country where they also have NICE running. And if, for example, something goes wrong at Jamaica they can just force all VeoliaLIRR commuters onto the n6x to get to Jamaica. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joel Up Front Posted July 10, 2013 Share #7 Posted July 10, 2013 The 179th Street station and the LIRR station/headquarters are about 3/4ths of a mile away from each other. The n4 is sort of an LIRR alternative because it follows the Babylon line up to where it crosses the city line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vistausss Posted July 10, 2013 Share #8 Posted July 10, 2013 The 179th Street station and the LIRR station/headquarters are about 3/4ths of a mile away from each other. The n4 is sort of an LIRR alternative because it follows the Babylon line up to where it crosses the city line. You probably didn't read correctly. I said when there's a problem at Jamaica. If there's a problem at Jamaica, there are no trains to Penn either. That's why I said the n6x. Not only is it faster, even to 179th St, you can get the very frequent and fast from there (or the depending on when the problem at Jamaica occurs). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mtatransit Posted July 10, 2013 Share #9 Posted July 10, 2013 50 million for 2013 that is more than bee line bus. I never knew the mta wanted so much and I started to think that privatizing the bus was the right decision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qjtransitmaster Posted July 13, 2013 Share #10 Posted July 13, 2013 50 million for 2013 that is more than bee line bus. I never knew the mta wanted so much and I started to think that privatizing the bus was the right decision. in the end it was!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrstone Posted July 13, 2013 Author Share #11 Posted July 13, 2013 Here's some points of interest I took away from the article: 80% of transit agencies cut fares or cut service in 2011. Since day one many people have speculated on this forum that Veolia wants to cut service and would find any reason to do so because Veolia would profit more by doing so. The article proves that Veolia has no reason to cut service because it gets paid by the service hour (which has been pointed posted here before by others). So,the more service Veolia offers the more they get paid, cutting service would mean cutting their pay. It's not like they get a budget and whatever is left over from what they cut they get to keep.... Three days before the the Jan. 1 takeover Veolia negotiated a 5 year deal with the TWU, avoiding layoffs, raising driver pay by 3%, shared health coverage costs, and changed the pension structure to a defined contribution plan (I assume this means a 401k?) with a 6% match. Drivers went three years without a contract with the MTA and the union vote to ratify Veollia's contract was 90%. Veolia spent $250,000 of its own money to clean Nassau's maintenance and operation facility (Mitchel Field). This was part of a $2 million dollar investment in bus repairs, training, and technology. "MTA’s former executive director, Jay Walder, and the transit bureaucracy at MTA predicted Veolia would fail. It didn’t and now Joe Lhota, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pick to replace Walder, has indicated a willingness to pilot test the Veolia model elsewhere. However, Lhota has much bigger problems right now, mainly a $9.9 billion gap in MTA’s capital budget and a $750 million operating shortfall." "Newspaper reports last winter claimed that over 50% of Nassau County bus fleet would have failed state inspections if the bus inspection had not been delegated by the state to MTA." Source: http://www.pwfinance.net/document/research_reprints/-8%20Veolia%20Solves.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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