-- Urges MTA Board Members to Restore 596 Positions --

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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today charged today that the MTA had decided to eliminate 596 station agents and supervisors after using a “flawed” study written with a “predetermined” goal of demonstrating that they were not needed.

In a letter to MTA Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger, Thompson called on MTA Board members to reject the study and restore the station agents in the budget. He said the MTA should restore the Station Customer Assistants (SCA) at the 158 locations slated to lose coverage by using a small portion of federal stimulus money, as Congress recently allowed.

SCAs provide travel information to riders, assist with fare purchases at MetroCard vending machines, and contact the proper authorities in the event of an emergency.

 “This report – cited in the MTA’s service reduction materials in December 2008 – appears to have been written with the expressed and predetermined goal of demonstrating that the SCA program is a failure,” Thompson wrote. “Its conclusion is in large part based on a defective observational survey of SCAs conducted by NYC Transit.”

Thompson said that the NYC Transit survey’s flaws included questionable survey methodology, suspect and contradictory findings, and unsupported assertions.

In the survey, NYC Transit did not randomly select station agent locations and offered no explanation of why it took this unscientific approach, Thompson said. NYC Transit also did not indicate when the survey was conducted, who made the observations and what training they received.

Further, NYC Transit combined actual observations of agent activity at 84 locations with reports from 26 locations where agents were not physically present, an apparent attempt to downplay the program’s usefulness. At the same time, it cited 818 SCA-customer interactions.

Also, according to the report, NYC Transit states that it found no evidence that agents deter crime, but offered no evidence to validate its contention.

The report does reveal that dozens of station entrances would be vulnerable to fare-beating if the agents are removed. Yet, the report concludes that the resulting “risk of additional fare evasion is moderate” without defining moderate or explaining how the conclusion was reached.

“Even if one were inclined to simply accept this unsubstantiated assertion, the actual cost savings achieved as a result of removing station agents might be even less than the modest amount projected by NYC Transit,” Thompson said. “Unfortunately, the cost in compromised safety and convenience to subway passengers would certainly be substantial.”

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