|
|
| The real price putting MTA BusTime Countdown clocks on bus stops (295757) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > BusChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
The real price putting MTA BusTime Countdown clocks on bus stops |
|
|
Posted by Gold_12th on Tue Jul 22 13:39:35 2014 Council bus-stop plan's costs tick upCountdown clocks will cost $20K each to duplicate MTA's GPS-based program. City Council members have just allocated millions of dollars to tell their constituents when the next city bus is coming, something the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can already do. Eleven council members set aside almost $2.8 million in the new city budget to outfit 100 or more bus stops with countdown clocks. The devices, which the city Department of Transportation estimates will cost $20,000 each to buy and install, will show riders when the next bus is expected to arrive. Yet almost every New Yorker already has access to the information. As part of its Bus Time program, the MTA recently equipped every city bus with GPS devices that allow riders to find out exactly where the vehicles are via SMS texting or a smartphone app. The transit agency spent $7,200 per bus on the program, which is available at all 15,000-plus bus stops across the city's five boroughs. A 2014 Nielsen poll found that 92% of all adults in the New York metropolitan area own a cellphone, including 69% who have a smartphone. Four times the original price Still, neither the cost nor any concerns about creating duplicative infrastructure is deterring clock proponents, who emphasize that the 8% of cellphone-less New Yorkers are overwhelmingly poor or elderly, and therefore not served by Bus Time. "If you have a grandmother, try to get her to use a cellphone," said Councilman Brad Lander, who budgeted $240,000 for bus-stop clocks in his Brooklyn district. "Twenty thousand dollars is a very reasonable cost for infrastructure that can be used by thousands of people to make their lives easier." That price tag is four times what Mr. Lander thought each clock would cost when he first backed the idea. At a press conference in December 2012, the councilman projected the expense of purchasing and installing a bus-shelter countdown clock to between $4,000 and $6,000. The quadrupling of the estimate may be attributable to the city's contract with Cemusa, the Spain-based company that builds and maintains New York's bus shelters. The 20-year deal, signed in 2005, calls for the company to pay the city a total of $1 billion for the right to sell advertising on bus shelters, newsstands and public toilets. If countdown clocks use premium advertising space on bus shelters, the city would need to lease it back. Expensive maintenance To avoid that, council members are considering placing the clocks on "wayfinding" panels most commonly used to outline historic districts. But some say putting stand-alone infrastructure outside the protection of bus shelters would inflate maintenance costs. "The real cost isn't $20,000 per sign; it's closer to $40,000 over about a five-year period when the cost of maintenance is included for outdoor hardware that is subject to weather and vandals," said Scott Kolber, CEO of Roadify, a data platform for mass-transit information. "We're told by industry experts to expect the five-year maintenance cost to be roughly equal to the upfront cost." If that proves to be the case, maintenance costs on countdown clocks could present a fiscal problem for the city—one that would run past the end of the 11 council members' terms. Although the clocks are being built with the members' discretionary funds, it will be up to the city Department of Transportation to come up with the money to keep them ticking. A spokesman for the agency disagreed with Mr. Kolber's figures, instead pegging the annual maintenance cost at about $1,000 per clock. He said the department expects the clocks would cost less to maintain than traffic lights because they would not have to be immediately fixed or replaced. The spokesman also said there is nothing in the contract with Cemusa that would prohibit the city from sitting down with the company to find a cost-effective way to integrate clocks into bus shelters. Cost-saving does not, however, appear to be a factor in the implementation of the clocks, which have been cheered by transit advocates as a service enhancement and a way to increase bus ridership. The initial cost of putting a countdown clock at every one of the city's bus stops would come to at least $300 million. The council's entire discretionary budget for 2015 totals $50 million. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140721/TRANSPORTATION/307209986/council-bus-stop-plans-costs-tick-up |
|
|
|