State of the Subways Report Card 2006

CREDITS

Since 1979, the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign has been a leading voice for New York City’s millions of daily subway and bus riders. The Straphangers Campaign is a project of the New York Public Interest Research Group Fund (NYPIRG).

The 2006 State of the Subways Report Card was made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is a leader in supporting the assessment of the quality of government services. We greatly appreciate the guidance and interest of our program officer, Ted Greenwood.

The profiles and MetroCard Ratings were designed by Matt Glomski and Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign in collaboration with Li Howard and Trevett McCandliss, who designed the profile mastheads. Li Howard also designed the cover and supervised all graphic elements of the report. Matt Glomski also analyzed the numbers for the report and oversaw its production. Gene Russianoff wrote the report.

Steven Romalewski, former director of NYPIRG’s Community Mapping Assistance Project (CMAP), helped develop the profile criteria and refine our approach. Marty DeBenedictis of CMAP consulted on the management of data. Campaign coordinator Neysa Pranger supervised editing and production. Fact-checking was done by Campaign intern Eric Talbot and Campaign field organizer Charity Carbine, who also provided production assistance. Additional production was done by Campaign interns Keishane Esturiene, Wanda Salas and Brian Campos with help from Jessica Call. Special thanks to Rebecca Weber, NYPIRG’s executive director, and Meaghan Cleveland, NYPIRG’s office manager, for their assistance during many phases of the report. We would especially like to thank members of Save the G ­ Teresa Toro, Michael Freedman-Schnapp, Rebecca White and Mark Borino ­ who helped conduct the passenger count on the G train.

The methodology for the profiles and the MetroCard Ratings was originally developed in close consultation with the University Transportation Research Center at City College. We are indebted to the analytic skills of Yuko Nakanishi and Robert Paaswell, the director of UTRC. At the start of our project, we received expert and generous guidance from Gary Henderson, who has headed past efforts at the MTA Inspector General to improve MTA performance measures.

We thank the following officials at MTA New York City Transit for their assistance: Martin Krieger at the Operations Planning Division; Lois Tendler, Deborah Hall-Moore and Carolyn Jackson-Colley at Government and Community Relations; and Executive Vice President Barbara Spencer.

We want to acknowledge the transit riders who gave us feedback on the original design and contents of the line profiles. Special thanks to our colleagues in the transit riders advocacy community: Beverly Dolinsky, and Andrew Albert of the New York City Transit Riders Council; Ira Greenberg of the Office of New York State Assembly Member Catherine Nolan; and Joseph G. Rappaport.

Front cover photo: Travis Ruse (www.travisruse.com)

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