Pickleball on Mars

The MTA will dig deep into the pockets of its customers in order to excavate and rifle the vestiges of the tax base's bank accounts. They will divert and seize our collective non-discretionary income. Shovel over mountains of big bucks to consultants and sub-contractors. Spend down their already indigent intellectual capital. Pull off every financial sleight of hand, conjure every trick and kickback, and stroke political alliances.

All in a nonetheless too-late for last-ditch stab at recovering the half-billion dollars it forfeited last year and hundreds of millions before that. In effect, they donated it to the fare-beaters it was too cowardly to confront.

Elected officials have proven too career-grounded to call out and the district attorneys too ethically challenged to prosecute decriminalized crime.

It would be easy to avoid the loss of a half-billion dollars to fare-beaters next year. The solution could be expounded on a grain of rice. 

But it requires an acceptance that a crime is a crime. And that is too much to ask of politicians who would rather blame the turnstiles and emergency gates for being so damned seductive.

Inanimate objects have no activists or constituents.

But it is not lying eyes that witness what we see. We are not scapegoating the fare-beaters. We are not insensitive to their poverty. But we are bothered that being robbed blind has become the wages of being law-abiding.

It comes in the form of fare increases and service cuts.

Traditional law enforcement is not an option during the present dark age of enlightenment. Instead, the MTA  must spend a future fortune to save a past fortune.

The MTA, in partnership with legislative authority and law-enforcement policy, should crack down on fare-beating, instead of tacitly condoning it. Because they won't, they are at least partially to blame for the non-clotting hemorrhage of honest folks' blood money.

Instead, it plans to redesign or replace thousands of turnstiles at over 420 subway stations. The goal is to thwart aspiring fare-beaters from doing the limbo or high-jump, thereby re-imagining the rule of law.

Will there be electric eyes and motion detectors? Blood-curdling shrieks when the entry is breached without payment?  Elaborate fences with spikes that retract when payment is recorded?  

Or maybe a moat like one that surrounds a tiger-enclosure at the zoo, but with a bridge that will automatically open up as soon as the fare is recorded on new portals and a cloud?

How much time will elapse from the planning stage to the completion of the measures to defeat the fare-beaters?  

First, Governor Kathy Hochul must convene a "Blue Ribbon Panel.” Before they collect their emoluments, there will be pickleball leagues on Mars. 

Whatever the MTA sees fit or is forced to do, and whatever the consequences of its decisions, their actions must in no way be allowed to compromise the welfare of union members. Naturally, during collective bargaining, bosses will trot out the standard managerial ploy about budget austerity.

But like the proverbial broken clock that is accurate twice a day, the MTA sometimes does the right thing. It is uncharacteristic, but it happens.

Such is the case regarding its station agents and cleaners.

Station agents have been a fixture in their booths since the days when Wild West legend Bat Masterson, who now spends his time in a Bronx cemetery, came to New York to write a column like Ron Isaac does now.

Before the MetroCard era, the agents dispensed bronze subway "tokens" that were redesigned every couple of years when the fare increased, although from 1904 to 1948, the fare went up only once — by a nickel. One day, probably before our election protocols are straightened out, these retired tokens will be rare and prized like ancient Roman coins.

The station agents were stuck in a booth most of the time. They were isolated, sedentary, certainly not over-stimulated and vulnerable to abuse and violence, because they often had around $10,000 in cash on hand.

Their former role, like horse and buggies and the practice of common human decency, has eroded. Because of smartphones, debit cards, credit cards and the OMNY app, all of which can be used to buy rides, their customary duties have become obsolete.

But the talents of the station agents are a continuing asset. They will not be phased out like MetroCards, said Transport Workers Union Local 100 Vice President Robert Kelley. And the job title will not be deleted, but refreshed.

The TWU and the MTA have agreed to job security for these workers, plus a dollar an hour pay increase. Not only will they not be eliminated by attrition, but several hundred new station agents will be hired.

The booths, where they used to dish out, hang out and answer redundant, self-explanatory questions, will stay open to be used as offices and communication nooks.

The agents will be issued cellular phones, training in "de-escalation" techniques, how to assist the elderly, disabled and other customers with OMNY technology and navigation of the system. They will have a wider range of interactions with the public and an added burden of accountability.

The new deployment of station agents has been criticized by Passengers United,” a "transit advocacy group.” Its president, Charlton D'Souza, told Pix 11 News that "having women or older station agents outside the booth walking in a deserted station by themselves could put their lives in danger. Many passengers, especially our senior citizens who are disabled, would have a hard time finding station agents if they are walking inside the station beyond the fare control area and need to be buzzed in."

Speaking recently at the Manhattan Institute, Janno Lieber, chairman of the MTA, cited data celebrating the microscopic decline in random subway felonies such as machete-hacking and acid-hurling. He also made a proposal that is too wise and logical to be seriously considered: that "dangerous" people be permanently barred from the subways (and presumably buses).

Civil libertarians and constitutional scholars would both reject this idea. Anyway, in New York State, criminal court judges are not allowed to be familiar with the concept of perils to human life. But even if it were possible, would our leaders be willing to fund the Navy Seals, Army Rangers, Delta Force and Green Berets needed to enforce it?

The MTA knows that to clean up its image, it must first clean its toilets.

With that lofty objective in their scouring minds, they are hiring 800 station cleaners to perform the miracle of "heavy-duty, specialized deep cleaning" of trains and platforms.

The floors of the subway cars will never be sterile, but every bit of disinfection will be appreciated by the bludgeoned bodies that fall down onto it.

Subway bathrooms, with their illicit transmissions and transactions, have for many years been among the most filthy and terrifying no-go areas on the planet. Only the Creator has an immune system resilient enough not to be rendered asunder. 

Security guards will be hired to monitor the limited number of bathrooms that will be open.  They should get combat pay.

Humanizing the MTA would be one of the most daunting challenges for a visionary. They are monumentally wasteful. But some of the drivers of their failure are beyond their control. The funding streams are incredibly convoluted and arguably, polluted.

Unfortunately, the subway system will never return to its glory days from before New York lost its innocence and came of age as I did. As an overprotected 8-year-old, I used to travel through the boroughs by subway, through tough neighborhoods, alone and unafraid at night in winter, just for a piano lesson.

No re-routing, signal trouble or police activity.

But the city still has majesty. Sometimes it needs to be propped up a bit. And those who do it are not the politicians and bureaucrats. They are our rank-in-file union yeomen.