Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll find out how close the subway system is to another crisis. We'll also find out about a Broadway producer who has led one life but has written two autobiographies.
Seven years ago, in what became known as the Summer of Hell, the subway system was hobbled by serious problems — two derailments; a track fire that sent nine people to the hospital; and a train that stalled in a tunnel, stranding hundreds in the dark without air-conditioning. The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, said the system was in a "state of emergency." Congestion pricing was supposed to generate the revenue for repairs and upgrades that would keep a crisis like that happening again. It has now been two months since Gov. Kathy Hochul put congestion pricing on hold. I asked Ana Ley, who covers mass transit, where that decision has left the transit system. The M.T.A. says that things are better, with 84 percent of trains on time now, compared with only 65 percent during the summer of 2017. How close has it come to a meltdown? The system has actually been running much better than it did in 2017, because the M.T.A. has prioritized a lot of the nuts-and-bolts work that it had been putting off. The Summer of Hell was a perfect storm of engineering failures that reflected how politics and bad decisions diverted money away from the needs of the system. The M.T.A. needs a lot more investment to prevent the kinds of disasters that happened during the Summer of Hell. Congestion pricing was going to provide much of that money. If the M.T.A. can't repair or update the most crucial components of the subway, experts say that it's just a matter of time before they start breaking down again, as they did in 2017. Wear and tear leads to disruptions and delays. So can a big weather event like a hurricane. Are things going to get worse in the fall, when school starts? It's impossible to know when things will deteriorate if the status quo remains. But yes, people who keep a close eye on the transit system believe this fall will be an important time to watch for mechanical problems. With students going back to school, ridership will be at its highest point since the Covid pandemic started four years ago. The added strain on the subway could test its resiliency. Right now, ridership is at about 70 percent of what it was before the pandemic began. One thing that wasn't talked about much in 2017 is climate change. How is climate change accelerating the problems that engineers are worried about? In the M.T.A.'s 20-year "needs assessment," released last year, the agency said that climate change — especially in the form of floods and extreme heat — has become one of its biggest threats. The engineers who designed the subway more than a century ago never expected the planet to grow as hot and as humid as it has become. A scientist at Columbia told me that the subway is especially prone to failure during the summer, when high temperatures can warp tracks and storms can flood tunnels. M.T.A. engineers routinely have to come up with ways to retrofit a lot of the subway to keep it from breaking down. Congestion pricing was unpopular, but now the M.T.A. has gone from a balanced budget to huge deficits. Can Governor Hochul find money elsewhere in the state budget and keep some transit projects going? The governor has promised many times now that she will find a way to plug the hole left by her decision to delay congestion pricing. But it's a very big hole, and if Donald Trump wins in November and she has not found the money, congestion pricing will be finished. Trump has already said that he would kill it. Last month, Hochul announced that she had found $54 million in state money to revive work on a long-awaited extension of the Second Avenue subway line in Manhattan, a project that was deferred after she put congestion pricing on hold. But that would only fund a small piece of a single project. Without the toll money generated from congestion pricing, the M.T.A. could have losses of $16.5 billion in its capital budget and $640 million in its operating budget. Hochul has suggested other ideas to fund the authority's capital plan, as have lawmakers, opponents of congestion pricing and some transit observers. The possibilities include raising taxes on the ultrawealthy, issuing a billion-dollar "I.O.U." to the authority and selling the naming rights for subway stations. Naming rights for subway stations? Is it realistic to think that tacking on the name of a corporation or a wealthy donor would bring in as much money as the M.T.A. says it needs? Besides making the subway even more confusing to navigate, naming rights would not raise nearly enough money to cover the M.T.A.'s needs. The Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, a watchdog group, did the math. If the naming rights were sold for the same $200,000 price as at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station, the most that could be raised would be $94 million a year. That's less than 10 percent of the revenue that would have been generated by congestion pricing. The group also said that the transit agency needs the money faster than naming deals could be arranged. WEATHER It will be mostly sunny today as the temperature climbs into the low 80s. Things will cool off in the evening, with lows in the upper 60s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended today (Tisha B'Av).
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The producer Julian Schlossberg has lived only one life, but has written two autobiographies. The first, published last year, began as a Covid pandemic project when theaters were closed, along with everything else. Schlossberg reminisced in the book about producing movies that starred the likes of Mia Farrow, Melanie Griffith and Natasha Richardson, as well as plays on and Off Broadway. This afternoon there will be a gathering to celebrate the second book, "My First Book — Part 2, a Producer's Life Continues." Schlossberg said it had come about because there was more to reminisce about. "Stories came up, and I thought, 'I didn't write about that'" the first time around, he said. Several involved the performer and playwright Renée Taylor, including one about how Schlossberg's first Broadway producing credit was for "It Had to Be You," which she wrote with her husband, Joseph Bologna. It opened at the John Golden Theater in May 1981, a few days after Lillian Hellman's play "The Little Foxes" had opened at what was then the Martin Beck Theater (now the Al Hirschfeld Theater). One night during the eight-week run of "It Had to Be You," Schlossberg said, "I get a call from the stage manager: 'Renée's upset about something and would like you to come down to the theater.' "I said, 'Can't someone else solve it?' No, so I go down to theater. I go to her dressing room. She has a vase in her hand. I'm not sure if I'm going to get it or if the wall's going to get it — I just know she's not happy." He said the first thing that came to mind: "You must be confused. Across the street is Elizabeth Taylor. You're Renée Taylor." That defused the tension. "She laughed so hard," he said, "I never found out what the problem was." METROPOLITAN DIARY Salvation Army
Dear Diary: My 21st birthday was coming up so I went to the Salvation Army to look for a dress. It was the middle of summer, and I was on the hunt for something sparkly and short to wear clubbing with friends. I navigated through the narrow aisles thick with secondhand clothes: velvet evening gowns, Planet Fitness T-shirts, leather pants with the tags still on. Customers chattered in Spanish and pressed themselves against the hangers to allow one another to pass. A small woman wearing a sun hat and a medical mask noticed me frown at a stain on one dress. She said her mother was a seamstress, and then explained how to remove the stain. She pointed to some other clothes she thought I should try on. "You have great legs," she said. "Show them off." "Don't thank me," she said, scurrying off toward the dress pants. "Thank your mother." — Lilly Sabella Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Kellina Moore and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: Why hellish times could lie ahead for the subway
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