NYC Transit leaders may have gotten the message that their five year estimate for repairing A-C line subway signals was unacceptable.

But nothing has dented the agency’s legendary incompetence in communicating service problems and options to its riders.

Although the newspapers have moved on to the whodunit story of the control room fire, transit-dependent Brooklynites are suddenly living a daily commuting nightmare.

Huge delays and outages are not just affecting A-C riders, but are spilling over into the inter-connected G, F and V systems. On Thursday night, for example, signals went out at the York Street Station, halting V and F service and stranding many who had already spent 45 minutes getting from Midtown to Jay Street on A and C trains. G service has suffered a variety of rush hour meltdowns throughout the week.

NYC Transit communications to stuck riders have been alternatively lacking, garbled, ambiguous and much too late to help — anything but urgent and reflective of emergency conditions.

We propose the following Code of Conduct for NYC Transit customer communications during the A-C signal reconstruction:

• Customer service and information representatives be present in stations throughout the delayed lines equipped with real-time information about additional problems and their likely duration. NYC Transit is a long way from the information superhighway, but the fact is that it rarely uses the many telephones and radios at its disposal in the system to get timely information to its employees and riders.

• These representatives warn people away from paying fares at subway stations where nothing is running, or the prospect of service is a long wait away so they can seek bus or taxi alternatives without wasting time and money. Station workers have a maddening habit of selling subway fares to customers above the platforms even when it has become obvious that something is amiss.

• Transit managers get out of their bureaucratic holes and help make this emegency customer information system work. When things go wrong, intelligent decisions about what advice to give riders needs to be made on the spot. The impression most subway riders get during problems is that no one is in charge.

Pulling something like this off will take leadership, urgency, creative management and a new sense of consideration for subway customers. That will be a heavy lift for the agency. But its credibility is now so low that it needs to take some extraordinary initiatives to restore it.

New Jersey Transit train riders also suffered appalling delays and service outages this week because managers at federally-enfeebled Amtrak shut down a series of switches on the Northeast Corridor line due to "severe weather conditions." Amtrak owns and runs this key line through New Jersey. The national railroad’s beggaring by the Bush Administration and Congress is preventing basic equipment improvements that could probably foresteall these kinds of problems. Then on Friday, problems with Amtrak’s overhead power system totally disrupted the morning rush and led NJ Transit to tell its customers to "seek alternative transportation." Transit told the Campaign it expected normal operations this week. Riders tempted to take shots at NJT boss George Warrington might be better off contacting Senators Corzine and Lautenberg to ask them to find a way to get the increasingly dead hand of Amtrak off of NJ Transit’s neck.

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