NYC NOW - February 26, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: In the New Jersey Senate race, Congress member Andy Kim has won the endorsements of the first three Democratic county committees that hold a secret ballot vote. Meanwhile, New York City's housing agency says the number of vacant rent-stabilized apartments plummeted last year amid a deep shortage of affordable units. Plus, the NYCLU is preparing to sue Columbia University for its decision last fall to temporarily suspend two pro-Palestinian student groups. Finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson talks with transportation reporter Stephen Nessen and editor Clayton Guse about the appropriate situations for using emergency brakes on the train, a new lawsuit against the MTA for underpaying cleaners during the pandemic, and answers some listener questions.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, February 26. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. In the New Jersey Senate race, Congress member Andy Kim has won the endorsements of the first three Democratic County committees that hold a secret ballot. WNIC's Nancy Solomon reports on yesterday's Hunterding County Convention, which was almost taken over by the committee chair who, supports Kim's opponent, First Lady Tammy Murphy.

Rank and file members had already turned in their paper ballots when the chair told the nearly 200 members that any candidate with more than 30% of the vote would share the coveted party line on the ballot. An uproar ensued. Committee members appealed and Kim ultimately won with 62% of the vote, calling the move crazy. This is what I've been speaking out again. It's just the party elites just trying to make decisions here that can put its thumb on the scale of this election. Kim also won the Democratic Convention in Burlington County over the weekend. His housing agency says the number of vacant rent-stabilized departments plummeted last year

amid a deep shortage of affordable units. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development says it also counted fewer low-cost departments deliberately kept off the market by landlords as a practice known as warehousing. Jody Leidecker is an organizer with the coalition to end apartment warehousing and says those sealed up units hurt the city. There's even one apartment that's being held off the market. We think it's important to move people into permanent, safe, affordable housing. Leidecker says they also fuel other problems such as rat infestations and break-ins that make life hard for neighboring tenants.

The New York chapter of the ACLU is threatening to sue Columbia University over its decision last fall to temporary. rarely suspend two pro-Palestinian student groups. The NYCLU claims that Colombia violated its own university policy when it suspended the student groups, which have been organized in protests on campus demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. In the letter, the NYCLU says the university has until March 1st to respond where it will face legal action. The university has seen regular protests since the October 7th attacks in Israel and the bombardments in Gaza that followed Columbia declined in common on the threat of

legal action. Right now, your forecast. 36, with some clouds out there, we have a warm week ahead. A slim chance of rain through midday to day, cloudy, then giving way to sunshine in the mid-50s. Tomorrow, better chance of rain late afternoon, partly sunny in 56, and Wednesday

we'll hit the 60s. Stay close. There's more after the break. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for Wend. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNYC's transportation reporter, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Gouza. Stephen, you wrote about the emergency breaks that are in all trains. Why did you choose that topic and what did you learn?

Emergency breaks were in the news because of vandal pulling the brake is what precipitated that non-fatal derailment on the one train last month. Yeah. Which isn't uncommon, but I was actually shocked how frequently it happens. MTA chair, Janelle Lieber, says emergency breaks on the subway trains were pulled 1,700 times last year, and of all of those incidents, only 30 were for legitimate emergencies. So I was wondering, especially in the older trains that have these emergency breaks, they're just dangling there. Like, it's almost tempting a red hanging thing that swings back and forth. You know, why do they have them?

Is this even necessary? And I was surprised to learn that the Federal Railway Administration, does require emergency breaks on all trains, but the FRA doesn't govern the MTA. But the MTA says, you know, in keeping with best safety practices, they have emergency breaks. And so I was curious, you know, when are you supposed to pull it? The MTA's own website actually sort of leaves it open to interpretation. It only says, quote, only pull the break if the train's continued movement presents an immediate danger to people. So I was checking the clips to see like how long this goes back, how long.

often as this been a problem. In 2010, the MTA reported that if someone's caught between the closing doors, you can pull the emergency break. And the grim occasion for that article was a stabbing on a subway train and someone actually pulled the emergency break and riders were trapped in a dark tunnel with this knife-wielding person, which is pretty crazy. Nowadays, the MTA advises us to pull the break when a parent or child are separated or if someone's having a medical episode. Other news this week, Clayton, tell us more about a new lawsuit against the MTA over underpaying cleaners during the pandemic? Yeah, this is a new lawsuit filed by the Comptroller's office this morning, but it goes back four years. I think we remember four years ago when

there was a big push to clean the subways. Cuomo shut down the system from 1 to 5 a.m. for a year to kind of allow for cleaning and also to push homeless people out of the system. But the MTA gave a lot of emergency contracts for companies to come in and deep clean the trains and stations. Two of them were Fleet Wash and LN Pro Services. I remember in a previous life at the Daily News. I was covering a lot of the overnight shutdown and talking to a lot of these workers and found that they were being paid troublingly low for being on the front lines of the pandemic when hundreds of New Yorkers were dying a day from COVID.

I remember talking to people who were making $15 or $18 an hour. Now, the city has prevailing wage rules that basically sets minimum rates for public work. Somewhere in the 20s for some of these cleaners, three, 400 of these people, the comptroller argues, were being underpaid, and they're owed a combined 2.5 million in restitution, fines and penalties. The MTA is pushing back saying, hey, we didn't include prevailing wage rules in these contracts because they were issued under emergency. So we'll see where the court comes down on this, but either way, it's, you know, it's a long time coming for some justice and back pay for these people potentially.

A portion of the segment that we've missed the past few episodes, admittedly, because there's just been so much news to discuss, is the curious commuter. So we're going to knock out a few in a row here. VS from Brooklyn writes, I've wondered this too as I'd had to run to catch the G train. Why is the G train so short? This is a somewhat easy question to answer. Basically, it's short because there's not that many riders on it.

Most subway trains have 10 cars like the A train will have eight subway cars. The G only has five, but the MTA says, you know, it's just not enough riders to justify the trains. It does monitor regular ridership to make sure that trains aren't getting overcrowded, and they'll address the capacity issue. They also noted that G train service was recently boosted during midday and weekends, and evening service is supposed to run every eight minutes. But not enough riders might be a little bit of a hard. hard sell to some people on the G line during rush hour. And also the effect of it, as you many people would know, is that because of the short trains, to catch a train, often you have to sprint down the platform because it doesn't go all the way to get yet.

Naturally, one assumes the train goes for the whole platform, but that's all I'll say. We have another listener who asks on Instagram, how much money will the MTA mysteriously burn through before they say they don't have enough to fix the subway? This is a bit of a loaded question, I'd say, but it's really interesting, right? It hits on a a point that a lot of people paying attention to, and that's the cost to run the subways and to expand the system and do all the construction on it, is more expensive in New York than nearly anywhere else in the world studies show this time. And again, there are some reasons for that, right? MTA pays two workers from a subway train instead of one, like a lot of cities do, a conductor in the middle of an operator in the front. New York has a very strong labor community, very powerful labor community that leads to wages being higher in general.

and then like, say, European countries, the MTA and construction companies who are doing the work that they hire have to cover benefits like health care and pensions and et cetera. But another way to answer the question is like what happens when the MTA runs out of money and is that actually at risk? And on the construction side of it, that is a real risk because the MTA is relying on congestion pricing, tolls below Manhattan, tolls Manhattan below 60th Street, to take out $15 billion worth of loans to upgrade the subway. They've already said if that doesn't come through, they're going to have to cancel some projects. And they've already delayed some major construction projects because there is the looming lawsuits in New Jersey and Manhattan federal courts that threaten to halt or further delay the launch of congestion pricing. It could still happen as soon as the spring, but a big TBD there. And while that question is perhaps loaded, it's not entirely theoretical. We did see during the pandemic what happens when everybody stops riding in the MTA.

is not bringing in any money. And what happened was the federal government swooped in with $16 billion to save the system. Is it going to happen again if there's another, you know, crazy situation where nobody's riding the subways? Hard to say. But it did happen once. Okay, we have a question from Meg in Brooklyn. She wants to know why the MTA calls riders customers, as in please let customers off the train first. The use of the term dates back to the 1990s and can be charged.

traced to the Long Island Railroad President Charles Hopp. He was in his term between 1990 to 1994, and he was the first one to use the term at the agency, according to the MTA, and an obituary, which they confirmed was accurate. The obit noted that he used the term customers, quote, to emphasize the railroad's responsibilities and duties to those it serves. The MTA now has a chief customer officer, Shanifa Riera, who agreed that the continued use of the term is appropriate. Here she is explaining why. I think it goes beyond, you know, the mandate of moving people from point A to point B. It's about the service. And we are in the business of service.

And in this case, is the customer always right? I mean, well, yes. Yes and no. But I would say for the most part, yes. For the most part, ringing endorsement of the customer. She notes the MTA has customer service, especially online, that really does field complaint. 24 hours a day. So in that regard, it does treat riders like customers who deserve a response to their questions and complaints. That is, Transportation Reporter Neeson and editor Clayton Goza. You can stay in the know on all things transit by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamis.com slash on the way. Stephen, Clayton, thanks so much as always. Thanks, Sean. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday. three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.