MTA's weird and unhelpful way of starting late night service changes.

[Lawrence St 1,163]

So if some of you guys have been watching the random thoughts thread lately, you've seen the hell I have been through with this service change. My question is why can't MTA be consistent with their own service changes? How will you say that a service change starts at 9:30 yet you haven't started any work until 10:15? 

My main concerns is when the service change actually starts happening, massive confusion starts to occur because every MTA employee is telling passengers different versions of what's going on.

[B35 via Church 9,489]

Wish I had an answer for ya, but this is their M.O.... Expecting consistency & competency from this agency is like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.... The MTA is still stuck somewhere in the middle of the last century when it comes to their ignorance of overnight usage on the subway..... Everybody aren't working 8-to-4's or 9-to-5's anymore & NYC during overnight hours isn't hooker & druggie central anymore.....

It starts from the top.... I never lash out at s/a's or c/r's with this sort of thing....

[Lawrence St 1,163]

Woops I didn't even finish the post, but I think you get my point.

 

Like they start announcing the service changes over the speakers at 9:30 PM, yet the countdown clocks along the whole line still remain normal, even at 149th St where there's a platform change. The workers literally watched all of us go onto the platform and wait for 15 minutes instead of actually telling us that there was a platform change. And just yesterday, I counted 3 trains at Grand Central that were still signed up to Woodlawn even though it was 10 PM.

[Lance 4,929]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the MTA, mainly because it's something that wouldn't take much effort to actually fix. It's a major expense to fix the infrastructure; it should not take a similar one to fix their ever-growing communications problem between the agency and its ridership. What's so annoying about this is that they're taking steps to get better at this, from hiring the Vignelli successors for service change posters to including the reason for service changes (even if they are too vague in my opinion). This effort however is stymied by misinformation and miscommunication from the train crews and the platform attendants. I tend to not blame the men on the ground for things such as this because usually that (mis)information is flowing down from their superiors. However, one should expect to know what's happening on their own lines, especially during a planned service change. Ignorance cannot absolve them from being part of the problem. Riders see those workers in the blue and orange vests and assume they know what's going on, so when they're doling out incorrect information, it's actually worse than no information at all. This is yet another thing the MTA needs to work on and soon.

[Lawrence St 1,163]

31 minutes ago, Lance said:

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the MTA, mainly because it's something that wouldn't take much effort to actually fix. It's a major expense to fix the infrastructure; it should not take a similar one to fix their ever-growing communications problem between the agency and its ridership. What's so annoying about this is that they're taking steps to get better at this, from hiring the Vignelli successors for service change posters to including the reason for service changes (even if they are too vague in my opinion). This effort however is stymied by misinformation and miscommunication from the train crews and the platform attendants. I tend to not blame the men on the ground for things such as this because usually that (mis)information is flowing down from their superiors. However, one should expect to know what's happening on their own lines, especially during a planned service change. Ignorance cannot absolve them from being part of the problem. Riders see those workers in the blue and orange vests and assume they know what's going on, so when they're doling out incorrect information, it's actually worse than no information at all. This is yet another thing the MTA needs to work on and soon.

PREACH.

 

I don't know why a SUPEVISOR would tell his own employees to tell passengers at 125th that the uptown is downstairs on the lower level. Like do they even read these service changes at all? Another thing they have to work on is poor timing. There is NO reason why the countdown clocks, which are suppose to be accurate along the entire A divison, should still display Woodlawn bound trains below 125th St and Crown Heights bound trains above 149th St at 10:15 PM, despite NUMEROUS amount of announcements saying the was cut in two sections.

[Lance 4,929]

Either that or the announcers need to be informed that the service change is starting late. It's understandable that unforeseen occurrences like late starts can happen. What needs to change is how these late starts are handled. I'm not sure if the service change station announcements are pre-recorded earlier in the day and set by timer, but if this is the case, someone needs to be there to cancel the playback to remove any possibility of confusion. If these are live announcements, there's even less of an excuse. This really isn't a complex problem, but you wouldn't know that by observing the MTA's practices.