Don't close the booths, governor

New York Daily News
June 25, 2003
By Lenore Skenazy

Excuse me, do you know where I can catch the uptown local? Do you know how to get my card out of the machine that's eating it? Do you notice anything odd about the man behind me who is raving about Satan and swinging an ax?

Take heart, New Yorkers: These and other pressing questions can still get answered by real, live token booth clerks - if Gov. Pataki does the right thing.
Sitting in front of him is a bill that would prohibit the closing of any token booth for the next three years. During that time, a panel of seven safety experts would study whether - duh - it is a good idea to keep human clerks down in the subway.

If the panel consists of cleverly disguised terrorists, it likely will vote to close all 62 booths on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's hit list. If the panel consists of actual subway riders, it will vote to keep them open.

After all, token clerks are the subway's first responders. Last year, they made more than 60,000 emergency calls to report everything from passengers having heart attacks to lowlifes toting suspicious packages. The very presence of token clerks deters crime - why mug someone when you know there's going to be a witness?

The MTA argues that because the booths it wants to close are open part-time anyway, what's the big deal? There will still be at least one fully staffed booth at each station at all hours.

But anyone who takes the train knows that these booths can be light years away from each other.

Savvy riders also have realized that when a token booth closes, it is replaced by a HEET - literally a High Entry/Exit Turnstile, but actually more like a Human-Size Linguini Maker.

These gates are opened by a swipe of the MetroCard (when the swipe works) and easily allow anyone who is not accompanied by a backpack, child, guide dog, package, stroller, suitcase or beer belly to waltz right in.

And anyone else can simply hop back upstairs, cross the street and skip back down with the stroller, suitcase, belly or dog. It's that easy!

If sacrificing our safety, convenience and goodwill were really going to save the MTA oodles of desperately needed cash, maybe a case could be made for these cuts. But this is an agency that has a history of fudging its finances - when it's not squandering them.

As for fudging, who can forget that the MTA claimed to have a $253 million deficit right before fares went up? But state Controller Alan Hevesi found it actually had a potential $83 million surplus.

As for squandering, all you have to do is visit 2 Broadway, the MTA's grand new headquarters that's a Hulk-size $100 million over budget. Closing the booths would save $6 million. Good management would have saved 15 times that.

Don't let the MTA cover its mistakes by ousting its clerks, governor. Stand clear of the closing booths.

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