Book Review: What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs

For transit lovers and planners across North America, and perhaps around the world, Jane Jacobs — the great opponent of highway builder and ultimate mid-century planner, Robert Moses — has achieved reverential status.  I fall into that group; forever grateful that Jane acted to save Greenwich Village, and forever inspired by her insights in the Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Two generations of urbanists, planners, activists and legislators have been influenced by Jacobs’ startling review of the obvious.  With an eternally curious and unassuming eye Jacobs reintroduced the beauty and intelligence of mankind’s greatest creation, its cities.  At the same time, Jacobs who was anything but dogmatic, has become the tabula rasa to be written upon by the sustainability movement, in its varied facets.  Some people complain Jacobs is cited too often.

The new essay collection in What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs illustrates the breadth of her influence and the genius of her observation.   While Jane was not a transportation theorist her descriptions of how cities operate and what makes for successful urban planning (or lack thereof) directly implicates sound transit policy.  The way we lay out our streets, the way we get to and from work, and the way we integrate uses of buildings into blocks, neighborhoods and cities all influence how citizens ideally move and how their choices are influenced.

 

The Great Electric Equalizer: the Bus?

When lay individuals consider the new electric economy as it pertains to transportation, they typically think of a trendy electric sports car or its corresponding charging station.  I would venture to say that seldom, if ever, do these individuals think about the stodgy old bus.  Well, the bus designed and built from Golden, CO based Proterra, formerly Mobile Energy Solutions, is far from the lumbering, belching bus your grandmother knew.  The 6 year old company is dedicated to making the drive components and energy storage systems for electric and hybrid buses, delivery vans and other commercial models, as well as the vehicles themselves.  Just this month, Proterra landed a $20 million investment from MK Energy and Infrastructure to build an assembly plant in Greenville, SC by 2011.

Unlike the majority of cars on the road, buses generally drive a fixed route that is highly predictable and routine.  This repetitive pattern makes it the perfect vehicle to adopt a range restricting electric engine.  Apparently, other cities feel the same way as Proterra has stated that as many as 21 transit agencies around the country had requested government funding for the purchase of more than $400 million worth of its vehicles.

From a technical perspective, the Proterra designed bus will travel 30 to 40 miles at 11 to 13 miles per hour before it needs a recharge, which it gets by passing under a contact arm at a bus stop or a bus yard.  According to Proterra founder Dale Hill, batteries can be recharged in under 10 minutes.  At present, the companies first and foremost objective is to reduce the price of the vehicle from approximatley $1 million to under $300,000.  This can only be accomplished by manufacturing scale, an issue currently being addressed with the new South Carolina plant.  From there, the largest technical challenge lies in extending the range of the battery and improving speed.  2012 appears to be the date that the company is targeting for these improvements.

While the electric car field is already crowded with competitors, the nascent electric bus and truck market is releatively spacious.  Smith Electric Vehicles of Kansas City, MO is one of the other companies attempting to make a dent in the heavy vehicle electric market.  For now however, it appears that Proterra has a significant headstart over its competitors in the US.  Generally, a good trend in cleantech power and transportation is to look at China.  If the nation of nearly 1.4 billion capitalists is pursuing an initiative, chances are it will have staying power in one form or another.  Well, plenty of Chinese manufacturers and state owned companies are pursuing electric buses.  Just one example here.

The electric bus has particularly outstanding potential.  This market is truly massive.  Just imagine a day in the next decade when cities like New York and Los Angelas have rapid bus networks that zip people across town while emitting zero noxious gas (so many more al fresco dining options…..).  Or, envision a time when all school buses are powered by a battery, thereby making a mere mild buzz as they pass by and not the standard rumble?  These days are no doubt coming.  Likely, sooner than we might think.  Companies like Proterra will help us get there.

 

Privatizing Transit: Not a Good Idea

**Disclaimer: I am working as an extern in the law department of the Chicago Transit Authority this summer.  The CTA does not endorse or sponsor my writing on this blog.**

Being a public transit person creates a lot of conversation, especially with people living in urban centers.  Everyone has a public transit story, or complaint, or idea.  Transit is the great commonality in cities, not merely as conversation, but as public space and property as well.  It is this latter piece, as public property and space that mystifies some people.

At least a handful of people have argued to me that public transit should be privatized or at least support itself financially without any sort of public subsidy.  Ironically, these seem to frequently be the same people that are upset that public transit has not made one sort of accommodation or another, whether it is for the handicapped, or enough service, or insufficient cleanliness.

I am in no way against economic efficiency in the sense that transit systems should work to keep costs down.  However it is problematic when transit systems are expected to fend for themselves financially (as Governor Christie seems to desire for NJ Transit).  Such a system results in a terrible combination of higher fares, less service, and greater inaccessibility for those who least can afford such cutbacks.

The Chicago Reader recently featured a fantastic history of the early years of the CTA.  Robert Loerzel wrote a very-well researched story of how transit systems operated in Chicago from the mid-nineteenth century until the period of public ownership of the urban rails in the mid-twentieth century.  Loerzel used this history to illustrate how private ownership of utilities frustrates public purposes.  Moreover, especially in this era of governmental criticism, he demonstrates why reformers sought public ownership of utilities, including public transit, in the first place.  A great summary quote:

The dream of municipal ownership finally became a reality in 1947, when the Chicago Transit Authority was formed to take over the bankrupt transit lines. Finding enough money to run the CTA has been a problem ever since. “A transit system that was unable to survive on fares as a private enterprise was somehow expected to do so as a public entity in a declining market,” Young wrote. The all-time high for public-transit use in Chicago was the late 1920s, he says, when the city’s streetcars, buses, and trains annually handled more than 1.1 billion rides. In 2009 the CTA handled 521 million rides, not quite half as many.

This history is not unique to Chicago and Loerzel’s article is informative for residents of all cities, not just Chicagoans.   Moreover, the lessons regarding transit apply to all public services (e.g. police, health care, roads, energy, water, etc.).

Based on those of my peers who have suggested privatizing transit I think many are just deluded by Reaganomics.  The others who believe more sincerely in privatization usually have more sinister anti-urban or racist or classist goals that go along with cutbacks in public transportation.

In these tough financial times it is difficult to find money for all services.  However, suggestions to privatize our public transportation systems is not the answer to our woes.  Private companies will not put people first, but rather profits.  The good of our cities depends on continuing investment (and reasonable expectations of sound fiscal policy with that investment) in our great public properties and spaces, our transportation systems.

 

Charging Ahead With Our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure

As the US moves ever so slowly to a transportation mix that includes plug-in electric vehicles (PEV), the lack of mileage range on PEVs has emerged as a critical concern going forward.  Despite many PEVs such as the Leaf, Coda, and the BYD e6 that have made mileage claims of approximately 100 miles per charge, the general public remains extremely worried that these cars will not live up to this stated performance.  Despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans drive far fewer than 100 miles per day, it is the freedom of untethered mobility that has become woven into the fabric of American life.  There is nothing more terrifying to the American driver than the feeling of being stranded.  This is even more magnified when driving a vehicle powered by a battery as oppoed to one simply running on a tank of liquid fuel.

There is no doubt that one of the fundamental obstacles toward widespread PEV adoption is the lack of a successful charging (“refueling”) infrastructure.  At present in the US, there does not exist a distributed network of PEV charging stations.  At best, companies such as Coulomb and Better Place have a smattering of stations across mainly California.  One issue these companies have faced has been finding a location that would provide for a concentrated amount of charging stations to satisfy demand.  In lieu of a highly developed gas station-esque car charging network, consumers will rely on their trusty garage outlet to provide their PEV with all the electrons it will need for a full days charge.  While this could be seen as convenient since one could simply charge the car overnight (though it is not clear this method is suitable for urban residents), this still does not satiate the demands of people who want to refill on the go when they’re out and about.

Now that I’ve laid out the dilemma, I would like to make a rather modest, albeit not novel, proposal.  It would entail massive, widespread deployment of distributed car charging stations.  These would be rolled out en masse in parking lots across the country.  This would have particular appeal in the suburbs as seemingly 99% of our suburban jungles are now paved over to accommodate strip malls or big box retailers.  Coincidentally, it just so happens that parking lots generally provide high solar irradiation compared to rooftops or other structures.  This is largely due to the lack of shadowing both from trees or high buildings.  Several companies have proposed “solar canopies” and several firms are actually developing parking lots with 10-200kW of solar potential.  Pairing the “solar canopy” concept with PEV battery charging stations could provide outstanding synergies.  Firstly, solar is a peaking resource meaning it produces the majority of its electricity during the day when most people are doing the bulk of their driving.  Secondly, with the implementation of the smart grid, this type of natural resource integration will reduce the strain on the local power utility.

Overall, the pairing of the solar parking lot canopy with PEV charging stations has the potential to become as ubiquitious as gas stations.  This will surely rush along the adoption of PEVs.  As for the cost of the solar canopy structure itself, or the battery charging station, I will discuss this in a later post.

 

Transit Decorations for Your Home

As a diversion from more serious discussions of transportation policy, today I bring the transit geeks among you the opportunity to spice up your home with some themed decorations.  I have previously written about subway maps, modeled after the famous London Tube Map, and how they inspire reinterpretation and artistic fun.  These decorative items follow in that tradition of reusing perhaps the most common utilitarian images in our culture.  Transit maps are part aesthetic representation, part pragmatic guide.  However, they are defining images that we all identify with in our own way individually and as metropolitan areas.  The help to define our mental understanding of our cities and how we relate to our space and our neighbors, geographically, culturally, and politically.  With that in mind, enjoy these various transit-oriented products.

Need help planning your route to work?  Do it in the shower with maps of New York, London, Boston, and Washington D.C. on shower curtains.  If you have a shower that has needs a shower curtain this is certainly a fun way to express city pride, especially if you are currently an expat from your city of choice.

The company Extrapete has created a collection of wallpaper maps.  They have prepared topographical and naval maps, but of course I am most interested in the representation of the Tokyo subway map.  They have removed all the place names from the map leaving only the lines and dots for an intriguing collage of shapes and colors that would surely spice up any room.

On the subject of the ubiquitous London Tube Map and its various reappropriations, Suck U.K. has developed a London Underground mirror, placing Harry Beck’s famous graphic schematic on mirror so that you can figure out how to get to Westminster Abbey while shaving. (See the picture at the top of the post)

Lastly, in case you feel that any of these products do not express your love (or obsession) with public transit well enough one person has laid out the New York City Subway Map in tile on the floor and walls of his bathroom.  The person has also provided a tile-by-tile blueprint of how to recreate his masterpiece.

I hope you are all inspired to make your own transit art, or at least attempt to see new beauty and inherent artistic value in the infrastructure we use every day.

 

Future of the Electric Car: the Nissan LEAF

[Greg Moran is a new contributor for The Transit Pass.  He develops energy power projects for International Power.]

Twenty years from today, we may just look back on 2010 as the year that electric cars hit the mainstream and put the world on a path toward widespread vehicle electrification.  While niche electric cars such as Tesla and Think are already in limited production and available for purchase today, no major automobile manufacture has to date released a plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) on the market.  However, that will change later this year with the introduction of the LEAF from Nissan.  The LEAF will be the first automobile produced by a major global automotive manufacturer that will not rely on an internal combustion engine fueled by gasoline.  Instead, the vehicle will be fully reliant on a 24 kWh lithium polymer battery developed jointly by Nissan and NEC (other hybrid and electric manufactures use more standard lithium-ion chemistry).

While critics of electric vehicles have voiced numerous objections to the PEV in general, perhaps the most frequent criticism has been on the topic of price competitiveness with traditional gasoline-fueled vehicles.  To this point, Nissan largely puts this issue to bed by starting the LEAF at $32,780.  After factoring in a federal tax credit of $7,500, the price drops to nearly $25,000.  This makes the LEAF competitive with traditional, non-electric automobiles in its class.  In certain states such as California, the LEAF would be eligible for an additional $5,000 in tax credits, thereby dropping the price to approximately $20,000.  Seeing California is chalk full of early technology adopters, Nissan figures the LEAF will sell well in the San Francisco and Los Angeles market (both markets also happen to be hotbeds for battery and electric car company start-ups).

Range anxiety is another consistent fear expressed by PEV critics.  Despite Americans propensity to drive more than our global counterparts, the vast majority of Americans drive less than 40 miles per day.  Nissan officially claims that the LEAF will get approximately 100 miles on one charge.  However, recent test drives have indicated that even this number is conservative and the range will likely be higher.  This 100 mile range will likely satisfy over 90% of Americans driving needs.

Nissan is currently working on fine-tuning its vehicle charging strategy.  At present, the LEAF will be able to reach a full charge in approximately 8 hours by simply plugging the vehicle into a standard garage power outlet.  However, Nissan is currently in discussions with numerous electric utilities and third party charging station technology providers.  In foreign markets, Nissan has signed an agreement with Israeli start-up Better Place to manage the vehicle’s battery by swapping the battery out at swapping stations when it becomes depleted.  Nissan is expected to test this model in the United States by 2012.  The holy grail of vehicle charging is clearly the uber-fast 3 minute charge, which would be akin to a trip to the old gas station.  This is currently technologically unfeasible, however certain fast-charging stations are becoming available that can charge a vehicle in 30 minutes.  Stay tuned for more progress on this front in the coming months as this issue has been grabbing the attention of prominent VCs.

Much of Nissan’s progress on the electric vehicle front can be traced to its Brazilian born CEO, Carlos Ghosn, one of the most dynamic visionaries in the auto industry today.  I would liken him to Apple’s Steve Jobs (although I think Mr. Ghosn has a general disdain for black turtlenecks) with respect to his charisma and ground breaking ideas.  Mr. Ghosn predicts that over 10% of the global vehicle fleet will be electric by 2020.  No small feat since today that figure stands at less than 1/1000th of 1%.  It remains to be seen whether Ghosn will be as successful of a marketer as Jobs.  This ability to communicate with the public will surely be absolutely essential to the nascent industry’s development going forward.

Currently, Ghosn is already seeking out solutions to some of the most pressing current issues pertaining to electric vehicles such as extended range and secondary usage of the battery after it is no longer capable of working in an automobile.  These are two fundamental issues that will require dynamic innovation going forward and will both be addressed in subsequent posts.

 

Density and Successful Provision of Public Transit

Transit planners and lovers wax romantic about the virtues of transit oriented development as well as the potential of current and future urban areas to support successful public transportation.  However, as Yonah Freemark at the Next American City points out, such development is only successful for cities that have sufficient urban density.  Freemark discussed the early 20th century idea and development of streetcar suburbs and why they no longer have their streetcars and whether we will make the same mistakes again with current light rail developments.  (My partner shared this column with me)

Aaron Renn argued last week on the Urbanophile that metropolitan areas with populations of less than about two million inhabitants don’t necessitate the kind of high densities urbanists often promote. Citing the example of Columbus, Ohio, Renn suggested that because these regions are small enough in area to make commuting from one end to the other by car possible within a short amount of time, creating dense, walkable neighborhoods focused around a “huge, packed, downtown core” is not absolutely necessary.

In some ways, his argument rings true: for those driving private automobiles, neighborhoods like the former streetcar suburbs may be ideal. For businesspeople hopping from one side of the region to the other (“to lunch”), driving in medium-sized cities works fine.

On the other hand, for everyone else—the young, the old, the poor, the sick—such neighborhoods provide no alternatives. You can’t easily walk to school or to the store or to the senior center when you live in a streetcar suburb. Nor can transit operators provide adequate service, since densities are too low to make frequent buses possible.

This discussion plays on something conceptually obvious, that to have successful transit there must be a critical mass of people relying on the service or else it is bound to fail.  No government can afford to run buses or trolleys down thoroughfares on a frequent basis when they will be largely empty most of the time. Moreover, with insufficient density and a lack of commercial destinations for residents transit will be underutilized.

However, that idea may not be as obvious as it seems. I cannot count how many times I have been waiting for the Green Line trolley in Boston when I have heard fellow riders complain and wonder out loud why the MBTA is not more like New York’s MTA.  The simple answer is that New York City subways are large, convenient and frequently running because they service a lot of people in a small area in densely populated Manhattan.  Clearly, boarding a trolley with 12 other people in Brookline is incredibly dissimilar from joining hundreds at Columbus Circle.

Therefore, there are many cities that may have large populations that are insufficiently dense to provide the kind of transit service that gives people reason to give up their cars.  In my mind for these borderline and unqualified urban areas there are at least three solutions if transit is to be developed.

1) Local, state and federal policy can encourage zoning changes to allow for greater density before building transit systems.

2) Communities can simultaneously adopt policies restricting the presence of cars per household and/or parking spaces to emphasize transit usage and car sharing.  In this fashion only households which desire to utilize transit will move into these communities, rendering both density and transit-dependent density.

3) Perhaps the least feasible of the ideas, but I will continue to push for pod transit in the suburbs.  I still believe a linkable pod system that utilizes public thoroughfares but simultaneously allows for the malleability of personal motor transit in suburban locations has a reasonable future.

As oil prices go up and American population continues to escalate we will want to develop successful transit systems.  In order to do so we must develop the housing and parking policies that correspond to make both viable.

 

Does Spirit Airlines Have a Soul?

There has been a lot of righteous indignation displayed by government officials (primarily by U.S. senators and Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood) over the proposal by Spirit Airlines to charge passengers for carry-on bags.  Specifically, Spirit Airlines has said that it will charge $45 for carry-on luggage using the overhead bins.  Some of the responses are almost comical:

“We are going from the sublime to the ridiculous with airlines,” Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said at a news conference last week in Washington.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the fee a “slap in the face to travelers.” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) called it “skyway robbery.”

The lawmakers hope to put the kibosh on the fee by imposing a tax on all airline revenue collected from such charges.

I’m not a frequent flyer, but I’ve flown enough to recognize that baggage fees have created a big problem with boarding airplanes.  In the era of the checked baggage fee people have chosen to cram everything into a carry-on.  Of course, when everyone brings a full-sized carry-on there is not enough room in the overhead bins for all the passenger luggage and the airline inevitably spends a lot of time placing carry-on bags in.

So, to combat that Spirit Airlines has instituted a carry-on bag fee.  What has been glossed over is that Spirit is merely providing incentive for passengers to check their bags in the first place rather than carrying them on.  The first checked bag will only cost $25 if checked online before arriving at the airport ($20 less than for a potentially smaller carry-on).  Therefore Spirit is merely making the carry-on a luxury and giving reason for people to check their luggage.  Oh my!  Senators are really upset that flights will run more smoothly and that Spirit may actually assist with difficulty of TSA security checks?

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe looks at this issue from a free market perspective.

But if [Senator Charles] Schumer grieves so deeply about travelers being “nickeled and dimed’’ when they fly, why has he never gone after the US ticket tax, which adds 7.5 percent to the price of every domestic flight? Or the $16.50 the federal government charges for each international departure and arrival? Or the $17 in customs and inspection fees paid by passengers flying into US airports from abroad? Or the “passenger facilities charges’’ (up to $18 per round-trip)? Or the “US Security Service Fee’’ ($2.50 per departure)? Or the “domestic segment fee’’ ($3.70 per flight segment)? The government’s unremitting “nickeling and diming’’ of airline passengers doesn’t trouble the sleep of New York’s senior senator. Only when a private firm acts does he toss and turn in anguish.

Reality check: Every airline charges for its overhead bins, just as every airline charges for bathrooms, oxygen masks, and flight attendants. The cost of those amenities is built into the fare you pay when you fly, and you pay whether you use them or not. The same used to be true of the “free’’ meals, pillows, and baggage handling airlines provided, before they unbundled those services, made them optional, and began charging for them separately. Spirit, an ultra-low cost carrier that describes itself as “the unbundling leader in the industry,’’ has decided to do the same for carry-on luggage, simultaneously reducing its base fares by $40 or more each way. …

Is Spirit’s strategy a good one? The free market can answer that question faster and more accurately than any one of us can. The less assistance it gets from grandstanding senators and transportation secretaries, the better off all travelers will be.

I agree that politicians have found a pinata not worthy of their attack, especially given that Spirit Airlines has less than 3% of the US market share for airlines.

 

Recessions are Cruel to Transit

Post #100 on the Transit Pass!

It is not news that economic downturns are particularly hard on transit, just like all government services.  At the moment that affordable government services and assistance are most needed is also the time when government can least afford to provide them.

The voters of New Jersey reap what they sow.  They dumped their CEO-governor Jon Corzine for the Republican challenger who promised the unattainable Holy Grail of New Jersey politics, lower property taxes.  Now in office, Chris Christie has dealt with New Jersey’s budget deficit by cutting services and refusing to raise taxes, on anyone.  Of course, when you don’t raise taxes you can still effectively tax many people by offering fewer governmental services.  Therefore, Joe Millionaire is barely affected by the situation but Jane Minimum-Wage is put into an even more difficult situation because suddenly day care, transit, health care, etc. are less available and more expensive.  Perhaps that is good politics for a Republican, but it is certainly bad governance.

Governor Chris Christie in February said he would cut the state’s $296 million annual subsidy for NJ Transit by 11 percent, or $33 million, to help close a $2.2 billion deficit in the state budget for the fiscal year ending June 30. Christie, 47, a Republican who took office in January on a pledge not to raise taxes, introduced a $29.3 billion budget last month that contains $10 billion in spending reductions.

Christie, in a March 17 interview, said “there’s no way to fix” NJ Transit’s budget woes without raising fares. The governor also said he supported increasing transit fees over putting tolls on free roads in New Jersey including Interstates 78, 80, 195 and 295.

Specifically, Christie has cut NJ Transit’s funding by 11%.  In response, NJ Transit has been forced to raise fares; increasing the cost of local bus and light rail travel by 10% and commuter bus and train travel by a hefty 25%.  I used NJ Transit’s commuter rail for a full year when I worked in New York.  At that time my 35-40 minute ride cost $198 for a monthly pass.  While most people in my hometown probably can absorb the 25% increase without too much difficulty.  However, along the same route are a number of towns with poorer towns, such as Paterson (median 2000 household income: $32,778) and Garfield (median 2000 household income: $42,748), where the residents will have much greater difficulty absorbing such a fare hike.

A monthly pass from Paterson to New York Penn Station is currently $166.  A 25% hike will bring that price to $207.50, or an extra $498 a year, and that does not even include the costs of a monthly pass for the bus or subway in New York City, given that most jobs are not within walking distance of Penn Station.  With the price of a subway pass included a person from Paterson could be required to spend $3,450 a year for transit.  That is simply outrageous when your household income is $32,778.

Governor Christie hasn’t lowered taxes, he has impaired the rights of people throughout the state to procure employment and provide effectively for their families.  For the sake of saving some very wealthy residents the pain of having to pay a a little more in income tax the lower class has been implicitly taxed by virtue of being poor.  Transit justice exists and this is not it.  Governor Christie lacks that sense of empathy that Obama has been smeared for.  He has prioritized the needs of suburban drivers over transit commuters, continuing our history of poor transit priorities.

 

When to Use the Emergency Brake?

If you have ever taken any sort of train you have seen that foreboding red device, the emergency brake.  When do we use it?  The New York Times’ City Room blog recently featured a video answering just that question.  The video–“Emergency Brake”–is by Casey Neistat, who risked arrest and prop limbs in the making of his production.

The basic moral of the story is that the emergency brake should never really be used while a train is in motion.  Do not use in the case of a fire, you’ll burn.  Do not use in the case of a medical emergency, the person will be caught in greater peril.  Do not use in case of a crime, you’re trapped with a criminal (probably armed and now angry).  The emergency brake should be saved for those times when the train is in the station and somebody is in danger, either caught in the door or fallen onto the tracks.

As Neistat clearly illustrates this a is a problem of signage and communication.  What the agencies think of as clear communication just has the average commuter confused.  Money quote from the Gothamist:

According to the Times, straphangers should pull the brake if “someone gets caught between the train’s closing doors, or between subway cars, and is about to be dragged to an unenviable fate.” In other circumstances, pulling the cord could make it harder for help to arrive. That’s what happened on a D train last November when a straphanger fatally stabbed another commuter and frightened passengers pulled the brake. The agency has told Gothamist that when a straphanger pulls the cord, it brings the train to an immediate stop using compressed-air brakes. The train crew must notify a control center, which in turn alerts police. The NYPD then advises the control center on how to respond, and that message is relayed to the train crew. It can take between 5 and 15 minutes for the crew to reset the braking function and get the train moving again.

Commuters pull the emergency brake about 1,000 times per year when there is no clear emergency. In 2009, the agency recorded 15 instances in which straphangers pulled the cord to respond to an emergency, like a sick rider, the paper notes. Some subway riders, like Brooklyn resident Zev David Deans, said the agency should more clearly outline when straphangers should, and shouldn’t, use the emergency brake. “They could put it in big letters — ‘Pull in case of …’ — and then the few reasons why,” he said. “If it just says ’emergency,’ you’re going to pull it for any reason.” An MTA NYC Transit spokesman said the current instructions are more than sufficient: “We think that it is clear.” (bold mine)