YOU, THE RIDING PUBLIC, DESERVE THE BEST PERFORMING and MOST COST-EFFICIENT RAIL SERVICES.

RAILSMITH-PTM WAS CREATED TO CLOSELY MONITOR AND PUBLICLY IN DETAIL REPORT THE WORK PERFORMANCE, PERSONNEL USAGE AND COST INFORMATION OF ALL RAILROAD SYSTEMS.

YOU, THE RIDING PUBLIC, DESERVE COMPLETE RAIL SERVICES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY.

YOU, THE RAILROAD SYSTEM EMPLOYEE OR CONSULTANT, DESERVE TO WORK IN THE BEST WORK ENVIRONMENTS THAT ARE PERFORMANCE BASED COMPETITIVE AND REWARDS THE TOP PERFORMANCE TEAMS AND INDVIDUALS.

YOU, THE BUSINESS OWNER AND MARKETER, DESERVE OPPORTUNITIES TO ADVERTISE YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO SPECIFIC RAILROAD CORRIDOR COMMUNITIES AND PROGRAMS.

YOU, THE RIDING PUBLIC AND RAILROAD PROFESSIONAL, DESERVE TO HAVE RAILROAD CORRIDOR PRIDE AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES AND PROGRAMS.

THE RAILROAD INDUSTRY IS EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE AND VERY RESISTENT TO MAJOR CHANGE.

ONE OF THE BEST INITIAL STRATEGIES TO DRIVE RAILROAD EXECUTIVES TO IMPLEMENT RAILSMITH-PTM IS TO WRITE YOUR RAILROAD AGENCY CHAIRPERSON, BOARD MEMBERS AND PRESIDENT ALONG WITH THE APPLICABLE STATE GOVERNOR AND/OR MUNICIPAL MAYOR

IN THE UPCOMING WEEKS THIS WEBPAGE WILL LIST ADDITIONAL CONTACT INFORMATION FOR RAILROAD CHAIRPERSONS, BOARD MEMBERS, PRESIDENTS, GOVERNORS AND MAYORS, IN THE MEANTIME, WE IMPLORE YOU TO DO AN INTERNET SEARCH FOR THE APPLICABLE CONTACT INFORMATION. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF RAIL SMITH - PTM.

BELOW ARE THE OFFICE ADDRESSES FOR THE PRESIDENTS OF NYC TRANSIT, THE LONG ISLAND RAILROAD, AND METRO NORTH RAILROAD. PLEASE WRITE CORRESPONDENCE REQUESTING IMPLEMENTATION OF RAILSMITH-PTM.

MTA BOARD CHAIRMAN & CEO
JANNO LIEBER
347 MADISON AVE
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10017

MTA NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT PRESIDENT
DEMETRIUS CRICHLOW
2 BROADWAY
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10004

MTA LONG ISLAND RAILROAD PRESIDENT
ROB FREE
JAMAICA STATION
JAMAICA, NEW YORK 11435-4380

MTA METRO NORTH RAILROAD PRESIDENT
JOHN VONASHEK
420 LEXINGTON AVENUE
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10017-3739

You can submit a request for implementation of Rail Smith-PTM through the customer feedback webpage below:

https://contact.mta.info/s/customer-feedback

THE FOLLOWING ARE NYCT INSIDER VIEW ARTICLES REGARDING THE PERSISTENT NY CITY SUBWAY PROBLEMS & ISSUES, IN SUPPORT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF RAIL SMITH PERFORMANCE TEAM MANAGEMENT:

ARTICLE 1:  The TA Factor - An Insider View of the Persistent NYC Transit Subway Problems By: Gary P. Smith, P.E., CCM

Have you ever wondered why mass transit train fares frequently keep increasing, while the provided mass transit train service continues to be marginal at best, and often very poor?

This is the first of a series of short articles that discusses in-depth the persistent problems and issues of the New York City Transit (NYCT) subway system, provided by a former insider. These same NYCT persistent problems, (and resulting poor train service with excessive operations, maintenance and construction costs), exist for all other passenger railroads throughout the United States. 

The great news is that over the past several years I have very diligently developed an all comprehensive solution to these extensive problems of NYCT and all railroads. The solution is named Rail Smith Performance Team Management. For detailed information on the revolutionary performance based railroad management system please visit www.railsmithptm.com

As a former managerial employee of the New York City Transit Authority, (formerly abbreviated as “the TA”), for several years I was a participant of a “TA Factor” monthly meeting with the General Contractor’s Association of New York City for discussions of how the TA could reduce their extremely high capital construction projects’ contractor costs.

The TA Factor general contractor meeting representatives were comprised of the Presidents and CEO’s of the largest TA projects contractor companies, for which at all these meetings the general contractor CEO’s and Presidents openly stated that they charged at least three to four times, (sometimes even much more than 400%), of the average cost for performing the same work for non-TA owner projects, due to the significant obstacles in performing and completing NYCT construction projects. This phenomenon of NYCT contractors charging a very significant extra cost of doing business with NYCT was commonly referred to as the “TA Factor”.

The following is the background and a brief description of just one of the many causes of the 400%, and more, TA Factor construction price escalations:

NYCT awards numerous multi-million dollar, (sometimes billion dollar), contracts that require private contractors to install equipment in various communications rooms, electrical distribution rooms, train signals rooms, other enclosures, and also at work sites along the various trackways throughout the vast NY City subway system. 

The communications rooms, electrical distribution rooms, signals rooms and other enclosures are securely locked and require NYCT equipment maintenance personnel to provide access (open the locked doors) for contractor equipment installation within the rooms and enclosures. 

The trackway work sites require access support from various operations support divisions and offices. Trackway work site access also is not readily fulfilled, with months of delays occurring from the time the work site access was requested and the time that the trackway work site access is finally fulfilled typically with very limited numbers of hours of granted trackway work area access, (incredibly sometimes one hour or less), for each fulfilled occasion that takes months to obtain.

Obviously without access to the project work sites within communication rooms, electrical distributions rooms, other enclosures and trackway work sites no project equipment can be installed. The TA in it’s entire decades of history, (to this very day), has very rarely ever provided timely equipment work site access for capital project contract work.

A NYCT consultant Project Manager, and associate of mine, recently was managing the construction installation of equipment for passenger station compliance with the Americans Disabilities Act (ADA). This NYCT consultant Project Manager was constantly very stressed out because the contractor he was managing had continual unfulfilled requests to access NYCT passenger station communications rooms (and other enclosures), to perform and complete the important project work in a timely manner and in accordance to the contractual project schedule.

In addition, I was a NYCT Construction Manager in charge of managing the contractors and project personnel for very important high speed fiber optic communication network projects, with cumulative budgets of over $600 million dollars. Getting access to communications rooms and trackway work sites was extremely problematic with the significant work site access delays causing the budget expenditures and contract schedule durations to minimally be three to four times greater than if the work site access was readily provided. 

Question 1: How can a NYCT contractor and NYCT project manager be expected to fulfill equipment and systems installation contractual schedule and budget goals if they are not provided timely access to the equipment installation spaces and areas?

The Best Question 1 Answer: Of course it’s impossible for a construction project to be completed within schedule and budget if the equipment installation site is not readily accessible; therefore the result of this lack of work site access (and other TA Factors to be discussed in future TA Factor articles) are contractors overcharging NYC Transit very excessive TA Factor burden costs (400% and more of their typical costs) as well as project completions taking at least three to four times longer (sometimes more) than it needs to.

Question 2: Why can’t NYC Transit readily provide work site access to their contractors that they issue capital construction contracts to?

The Best Question 2 Answer: NYC Transit’s separate adversarial departments/divisions management structure and bureaucracy is so unsuitable such that what (on the surface) would seem as simple tasks of opening up secured room doors as needed, and providing timely access for trackway work sites has always been very inefficiently and inconsistently provided for NYCT contractors to perform their equipment installation work in a timely manner.

The typical excuse that the NYCT operations and maintenance divisions’ representatives reply in their denial of contractor project work site access requests is their lack of available operations and maintenance personnel to provide the capital project required work site access.For which the initial simple solution would seem to be to hire more operations and maintenance personnel to provide the required capital projects work site access; however NYCT’s bureaucracy restricts this from being done, so the work site access problem is never ending and has remained unresolved for numerous decades to this very day.

Question 3: What is a NYCT Project Construction Manager to do when his contractor’s requests for work site access is continually denied or at best significantly delayed?

The Best Question 3 Answer: The NYCT Project Construction Manager has two basic choices of action in attempting to overcome lack of project work site access. 

The first choice is just accept the delays and continue to submit work site access requests, without making any fuss about it. However this suffering in silence project management results in overall project completion delays and project cost overruns. 

The second choice the NYCT Project Construction Manager has in attempting to overcome lack of project work site access is to continually write memos and emails to the applicable NYCT maintenance and operations senior and executive management, stating the resulting project delays and cost overruns, with requests for immediate resolution. 

This second choice of continually writing complaint correspondence is “stepping on toes”, which is very risky as while it can achieve obtaining the project work site access in a more timely manner; however the lower level maintenance and operations managers generally will be resentful that complaints were submitted over their heads to their superiors. 

The developed resentfulness typically results in difficulty obtaining completed work inspections, final sign-off of the completion of the capital contract work and obtaining other important required capital project support items. So in effect NYCT Project Managers and contractors are in a no-win situation regarding lack of work site access.

Beyond the significant delays in providing work site access to install equipment there are many other NYCT bureaucracy issues (to be discussed in forthcoming TA Factor articles) that also are very problematic for NYCT Project Managers and capital contractors for the vast majority of dozens of NYCT construction projects that are in place each and every year.

I am a 22 year former NYC Transit employee, for which I uniquely worked in 10 different mostly managerial job positions within the Department of Buses - Facilities, Department of Subways Rapid Transit Operations (RTO), Department of Subways Maintenance of Way-Infrastructure (MOW), Department of Subways - Capital Programs, and the Department of Capital Program Management (CPM).

My diverse railroad operations, railroad maintenance and railroad capital programs planning and control along with diverse capital project management work experience, has in-depthly exposed me to hundreds, if not thousands, of individual NYCT departments and divisions personnel mindsets, work efforts and performance results. 

Generally most NYCT personnel work efforts are conducted with the mindset that each of their own NYCT individual operating, maintenance or capital design and construction department/division entities are the only thing that really matters, with little to no regard for the other NYCT departments’ and divisions’ work responsibilities outside of their own; and most importantly with little to no regard for what’s best for NYCT and the riding public as a whole.

Sadly, I have attended numerous meetings where the NYCT subways department operations and maintenance management, supervisory and administrative personnel have directly referred to the NYCT department of capital program management (CPM) personnel as “the enemy” and I have attended other meetings where the CPM personnel have directly lied to and in many ways disrespected the NYCT operations and maintenance department personnel.

In the operations and maintenance division management meetings I would personally attempt to quell the “CPM is the enemy” and vice versa (in the CPM meetings) openly hostile statements against the other department personnel, but it was always looked upon as me being a traitor or being an outsider. 

Unfortunately for decades through this very day, there has been and continues to be a very negative NYCT inter-departmental and divisions/program offices personnel management deeply embedded work culture chasm between NYCT departments and divisions. This pervasive separate department/divisions/program offices personnel attitudes and outside departments/divisions/program offices animosity is pervasive throughout NYCT’s organization, and has been and continues to be tremendously detrimental to providing the highest quality and most cost efficient subway train service to the riding public.

While the NYCT subway system infrastructure physically needs to be vastly upgraded by issuing capital construction contracts, the reality is under the past and same present NYCT management structures the great majority of the capital project program funding and expenditures has been and always will continually be severely misused and largely wasted. 

In conclusion, It should be totally unacceptable (but it isn’t) that the great majority of the new significant capital program funding revenue stream generated through street vehicle congestion pricing will not significantly improve the quality of NYCT subway service. Passenger fares will continue to significantly increase with continued marginal to poor service; due to NYCT’s continuation of TA Factor inefficiencies and lack of productivity. 

Rail Smith Performance Team Management was created to eliminate the TA Factor through implementation of the most beneficial and innovative performance based management system ever created.

In future upcoming NYCT TA Factor short articles I will provide discussion of NYCT’s general very poor employee morale, often poor employee work ethics, and poor employee work environments along with additional descriptions of unproductive and inefficient NYCT work processes and procedures.

Please stay tuned and look for my next TA Factor Article 2 to be released in the upcoming weeks.