This column originally appeared inOn The Way,a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation.
Sign upto get the full version, which includes answers to reader questions, trivia, service changes and more, in your inbox every Thursday.
When Rasheta Bunting, a blind woman from Canarsie, takes the subway, she relies on her cane to get to the center of the platform where the conductors’ cab is located. She said the conductors, who pop their heads out of windows at each stop, ensure the doors don’t close on her and let her know if she’s heading in the right direction.
“Having a second person there, they’re like your friend in transportation,” said Bunting, 51. “They’re the ones that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can trust that’s going to get you safely from point A to point B.”
In many subway systems across the world, trains are run by just one person. In cities like Paris, some subway lines are fully automated, without a transit worker on board. That’s led government spending hawks in New York to call for single-person train crews as a potential cost-saving measure for the MTA.
But now, Transport Workers Union Local 100 is launching a fresh fight to enshrine their jobs into law. The group is pushing state legislation that would require two-person crews on the city’s subway trains, with an operator at the front to drive and a conductor at the center to make announcements, help riders and ensure everyone is on board before closing the doors.
Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a near-identical bill passed by the Senate and Assembly last year. But the measure’s supporters believe this year could be different. State lawmakers, including Hochul, are up for re-election — and are facing heightened pressure from Local 100, whose contract expires this spring.
“It will be a part of the contract negotiations and we will fight it back,” said Transport Workers Union International President John Samuelsen. “We will fend it off and the two-person train crew will remain long after the contract is signed, long after I retire.”
In vetoing the bill, Hochul said requiring two workers on every train costs $10 million a year. The legislation, she said, would prevent the MTA from taking advantage of modern signal systems that allow trains to run automatically. That technology is already in place along the full length of the 7 and L lines, where trains run automatically and operators at the front do not actually drive, but push a button that tells a computer system they’re alert and looking at the tracks ahead.
State Sen. Kevin Parker and Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman are working to reintroduce the bill, and plan to add an amendment that would allow for one-person train crews to continue operating on shorter trains, like those that run on the G line and the subway’s shuttles.
Parker, whose father was a transit worker for 29 years, billed it as a safety issue.
“A machine or computer can’t tell whether there’s a lady who is trying to get a stroller into a crowded subway train,” Parker said. “If there’s an emergency in a station or on a track, a computer is not necessarily built to respond to those kinds of emergencies.”
Representatives for the MTA and the governor declined to comment on pending legislation.
The idea of retaining two-person subway crews in New York was ludicrous to people like Alon Levy, a fellow at the NYU Marron Institute who studies the MTA’s sky-high operating costs and said cities like Taipei that use one-person subway crews are on the “technological frontier.”
“Two-person train operations remain a poor industry practice on subways,” said Levy. “New York has serious problems with solipsism and exceptionalism, leading labor to look down on OPTO [one-person train operations] on lines much more crowded than New York’s, because they think Asia is still poor and Europe is a bunch of tourist villages, as New York slips down the world rankings of subway systems.”
Transport Workers Union also commissioned a survey from the Honan Strategy Group this February, which asked roughly 1,500 people in New York and New Jersey how they felt about the legislation to require two-person crews. It found 61% of the respondents were against one-person subway crews and automated trains.
“The overwhelming amount of riders in New York City want humans in the system,” Samuelsen said. “They want human workers. They don’t want robots, they don’t wanna trust their safety and security to robots, to artificial intelligence, to technology.”
Gothamist: NY lawmakers, transit union makes fresh push to enshrine 2-person subway crews
By Stephen Nessen | Original Article
This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation.
Sign up to get the full version, which includes answers to reader questions, trivia, service changes and more, in your inbox every Thursday.
When Rasheta Bunting, a blind woman from Canarsie, takes the subway, she relies on her cane to get to the center of the platform where the conductors’ cab is located. She said the conductors, who pop their heads out of windows at each stop, ensure the doors don’t close on her and let her know if she’s heading in the right direction.
“Having a second person there, they’re like your friend in transportation,” said Bunting, 51. “They’re the ones that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can trust that’s going to get you safely from point A to point B.”
In many subway systems across the world, trains are run by just one person. In cities like Paris, some subway lines are fully automated, without a transit worker on board. That’s led government spending hawks in New York to call for single-person train crews as a potential cost-saving measure for the MTA.
But now, Transport Workers Union Local 100 is launching a fresh fight to enshrine their jobs into law. The group is pushing state legislation that would require two-person crews on the city’s subway trains, with an operator at the front to drive and a conductor at the center to make announcements, help riders and ensure everyone is on board before closing the doors.
Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a near-identical bill passed by the Senate and Assembly last year. But the measure’s supporters believe this year could be different. State lawmakers, including Hochul, are up for re-election — and are facing heightened pressure from Local 100, whose contract expires this spring.
“It will be a part of the contract negotiations and we will fight it back,” said Transport Workers Union International President John Samuelsen. “We will fend it off and the two-person train crew will remain long after the contract is signed, long after I retire.”
In vetoing the bill, Hochul said requiring two workers on every train costs $10 million a year. The legislation, she said, would prevent the MTA from taking advantage of modern signal systems that allow trains to run automatically. That technology is already in place along the full length of the 7 and L lines, where trains run automatically and operators at the front do not actually drive, but push a button that tells a computer system they’re alert and looking at the tracks ahead.
State Sen. Kevin Parker and Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman are working to reintroduce the bill, and plan to add an amendment that would allow for one-person train crews to continue operating on shorter trains, like those that run on the G line and the subway’s shuttles.
Parker, whose father was a transit worker for 29 years, billed it as a safety issue.
“A machine or computer can’t tell whether there’s a lady who is trying to get a stroller into a crowded subway train,” Parker said. “If there’s an emergency in a station or on a track, a computer is not necessarily built to respond to those kinds of emergencies.”
Representatives for the MTA and the governor declined to comment on pending legislation.
The idea of retaining two-person subway crews in New York was ludicrous to people like Alon Levy, a fellow at the NYU Marron Institute who studies the MTA’s sky-high operating costs and said cities like Taipei that use one-person subway crews are on the “technological frontier.”
“Two-person train operations remain a poor industry practice on subways,” said Levy. “New York has serious problems with solipsism and exceptionalism, leading labor to look down on OPTO [one-person train operations] on lines much more crowded than New York’s, because they think Asia is still poor and Europe is a bunch of tourist villages, as New York slips down the world rankings of subway systems.”
Transport Workers Union also commissioned a survey from the Honan Strategy Group this February, which asked roughly 1,500 people in New York and New Jersey how they felt about the legislation to require two-person crews. It found 61% of the respondents were against one-person subway crews and automated trains.
“The overwhelming amount of riders in New York City want humans in the system,” Samuelsen said. “They want human workers. They don’t want robots, they don’t wanna trust their safety and security to robots, to artificial intelligence, to technology.”
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