NEW YORK — Call it mood projection if you will, but subway riders seemed grumpier than usual yesterday morning, even for a Monday, the New York Times reported.
Having braced for a transit strike, many were slow to get their groove back after waking up to discover that Armageddon had been delayed. When you see a mother brusquely waving off a stranger who offered to help her carry a stroller down a flight of subway stairs, you know that good cheer is in limited supply.
It was joyless being stuck in mass-transit limbo. There was no strike. But there was not yet a settlement, either. So New Yorkers enjoyed neither clear relief nor an opportunity to prove their mettle under hardship.
It was also evident yesterday (as if it wasn’t already) that one important group had no seat at the bargaining table. Management was there. The union was there. But no one represented the interests of the ordinary rider, someone who wants transit workers to get respect and a fair wage but who also has no desire to pay through the nose at the fare box. In other words, someone who may very well be you.
To fill the void comes a group called Riders Against Irritating Laggards — RAIL, for short. You may take that word in any of its several meanings. The organization is not well known, no doubt because it was conceived only yesterday and has a membership of one. But here are some of its thoughts, with help from Stan Fischler, a subway historian and a student of underground sociology.
To begin with the mandarins of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, RAIL believes they could do a better job of recognizing that they are public servants and therefore accountable, above all, to the riders.
Four weeks ago, after months of allowing people to believe that its expected budget deficit for 2003 was about $600 million, the agency suddenly announced that the true figure was $1.1 billion. How to explain this great leap backward? The agency didn’t even try. And it wonders why many New Yorkers have trouble taking everything it says at face value.
RAIL thinks that Albany might consider an equivalent to the Taylor Law for the managers of government agencies like the transportation authority. The Taylor Law, as you know, prohibits strikes by public employees. But what if management contributes to a strike atmosphere — say, by not coming clean about its finances and the need for a fare increase until after its ultimate boss, the governor, has been re-elected?
The concept of shared responsibility would seem to have a hole that needs mending. How about legislation that would dock agency managers as well as workers two days’ pay for each day of a strike? In the spirit of mending, it could be called the Tailor Law.
If Mr. Fischler were at the bargaining table, he would have asked subway managers to commit themselves to better service. More trains are needed to relieve overcrowding. “Frequency of service is the key,” he said.
RAIL would have added that crowding might be eased if certain rules were strictly enforced. Signs at token booths clearly list subway no-no’s, including “no bulky items likely to inconvenience others.” Ha! When was the last time you saw that one obeyed?
IF seated at the table, RAIL would have asked subway workers why so many of them seem to delight in closing the doors of a local train the exact moment that an express train pulls in across the platform. This maddening practice may be understandable during peak hours, when holding a train, even for a few seconds, can create problems. But at midnight?
“It makes absolutely no sense,” Mr. Fischler said. “The express is at war with the local. They’re like different armies.”
While RAIL believes that subway conductors and bus drivers are collectively better than they were years ago, many still fall short of the mark when it comes to announcements that are audible and comprehensible, free of jargon like “we are being held by supervision.”
And is it asking too much of token clerks to stop talking to colleagues in the booth so that customers do not stand helplessly at the window, waiting in vain to be served while a train pulls into the station?
In return for concessions on these issues, RAIL will urge its members — once people actually join — to mend their own ways. They will be encouraged to drop soda cans into trash baskets, and to move deep into subway cars, and to refrain from holding doors open and thus causing delays.
It won’t be easy avoiding wildcat actions, though. You may have noticed that this is a fiercely bloody-minded and unruly bunch.