Finally, a little business sense over at the MTA. Today, they announced plans to make each subway line operate as it’s own, autonomous rail line. Each line will have it’s own manager that can focus on the needs of that specific line.
Howard H. Roberts Jr., president of New York City Transit, will announce an overhaul today of how the subway system is run. The changes are designed to give individual subway lines a greater degree of autonomy by putting each one under the direction of a manager who will be responsible for almost everything that happens on the tracks, in the trains and in the stations. [NY Times]
Currently, there are single managers that handle multiple lines.
Of course, with everything the MTA does, there has to be a pilot. Can’t just do it, we need to test it until the end of time.
So first guinea pigs will be the 7 line and L lines. They were chosen because they are fairly self contained (unlike other lines that share tracks).
The plan is to then release another batch of subway rider report cards to see if there was any improvement noticed by riders.
SUBWAYblogger 
Interesting. Not to get off topic, but is it me, or is it that the Delancy street F train always seems to be stalled in the station? I mean, literally, every morning, without fail. It’s kind of like i can predict when this is going to happen every moment.
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interesting, and probably effective. sort of like when your name is on the business, when you manage something, you take pride in how it does. and if they tie promotions and pay raises to the best managed lines, all the better. or i suppose that might violte the foundations of the union. never mind.
Sedge
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Sedge, Management doesn’t belong to a Union, that in it self would violate the foundations of the Union. I don’t know how this is going to work, but if it improves the system I’m all for it!
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So based on what Tom says, the managers would be eligible for performance based incentives. The better your line runs, the higher your bonus.
Of course it would be hard to compare lines. Old lines would not be as reliable as newer ones.
However, you could have each line be evaluated on historical data. If your line improved on time performance by 30% year to year, that would be bonus material.
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Management already recieves bonuses for on time performance and many other criteria. I don’t believe it’s been a money issue, more of an accountability thing. Also like others have been saying how are the managers going to share the recources available?
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[…] strategy of having the lines individually managed may not be a great idea when it comes to custodian services. Something like cleaning the trains […]
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