As assistant chief transportation officer for New York City Transit, Pamela Elsey plans repairs, maintenance and capital improvements on all 24 subway routes, which run over 660 miles of track and serve more than 5.4 million riders daily. Ms. Elsey, 59, started as a railroad clerk in 1985, selling tokens. She was soon promoted to a tower operator and then a train dispatcher. In her nearly 30-year career with the transit agency, she has been superintendent of all but one of the departments she now oversees. A Brooklyn resident, Ms. Elsey rides the subway daily.
Joshua Bright for The New York Times Pamela Elsey.Q:
Tell me about a typical day.
A:
I’m always in meetings. Maybe once or twice a week Ido see my office, just to gather up all of this information and make sure what I’ve taken in is appropriately disseminated among my groups. There are other times where I have to respond to incidents like derailments, floods. My unit is also in charge of winter operations. When there’s a snowstorm, we’re the ones who get all of the equipment out there on the right of way. Even if the trains aren’t running, we’re running up and down the tracks to keep them clear.
We played a big role in Sandy. When everyone else wasn’t working, we were working. We were taking those pump trains to the tunnels and pumping out the water, so I was up making sure that everyone got on those trains and got out there to get this done because it was 24/7 for us. So, at times like that, I’m actually boots on the ground.
Q:
To repair the system, you have to inconvenience some riders. How do you decide who?
A:
We actually have a whole group called ! Operation Planning, and they go out and they do surveys and customer counts and they try to do the least amount of impact to the customer. I mean, they know everything about the riders, the communities, who’s there, how often people use the line. They use information from the swipes, so they know if they do something on any one day how many customers will be inconvenienced. That determines whether we do something midday, on a weekend, etc. But some jobs, they need to be done. We need to do the work. It’s all about work and getting the work done. It’s not about one community or another.
Q:
What about Hurricane Sandy repairs?
A:
We have a two-year plan to get the Sandy work done, which includes the Montague tube, the Greenpoint tube, the Canarsie tube, the Joralemon tube, the Clark Street tube. I think they may be doing some work in the 148th Street yard, the Coney Island yard and the Rockaways, which ha already been mostly repaired.
When we brought back the Rockaways, it was a really nice day. You could see the bay, you could see the airport, you could see the ocean. I’d never looked at it in that sense of being something that people loved. I only looked at it as: the A train goes across the flats. One goes this way and one goes that way.
Q:
What’s happening with the R train?
A:
Everyone knows it took a while for us to assess how we would do the work on the Montague tube. We knew it would have a great impact on our customers, so we looked at it very, very closely. We drew up the plan on how it would be done on the service side, the operation side, the reconstruction side â€" but the Montague tunnel was one of the worst damaged tunnels, and they’ll be working in there for 14 to 15 months, 24 hours a day, which is something normally we do not do. We usually work on weekdays or weekends.
Q:
Fift! een month! s? How is that possible?
A:
It’s a big hit, but the tunnel is in a state of almost total disrepair. The signal system, almost daily we have disruptions in that tunnel because something’s not working. You have components which are totally corroded. The water sat in there a long time â€" seawater almost up to the ceiling. We were pumping, but the major components â€" the trackway and the signal system â€" were underwater. And it totally undermined it. It’s an inconvenience, but it’s a must because it’s unsafe. The tunnel will be totally deconstructed and rebuilt.
The plan, of course, is to use the adjacent lines and to direct those people to where those lines are. We’ll be highlighting the transfer points and where they can continue their ride. There’s going to be a lot of media, a lot of signage, direction.
Q:
What do the yellow trains do?
A:
We have a vacuum train that goes along the trackway nd it vacuums up garbage. We have the refuse trains, which go from station to station, and they actually put the garbage on those trains. That’s done nightly. We have the trains that have the cranes on it and move the rail. We have balance regulators. We have tampers. Hoppers full of stones, and we’ll bring that to the site. We have the snow throwers. We have rail grinders, which actually make sure the rail is smoothed out. Some of these you might not see unless you’re at a work site, and we may pull them to a work site so they can do their work.
Q:
Which line has the oldest cars?
A:
The oldest cars I believe are the R32s. I think they have some on the C line. So I think I would be safe to say the cars on the C line are now the oldest.
Q:
I see countdown timers on the numbered lines, but not all the lettered lines. Why?
A:
It’s all technology. The countdown counters ! come with! the station rehab projects. For instance, the countdown clocks that actually tell you the minutes the train is going to arrive in the station are part of the technology that comes along with the automatic train system, which exists in the rail control center, and the trains are actually talking to the right of way in the track. The countdown clocks are in the numbers side of the trains. So that work has been achieved. On the letters side, we’re trying to put other remedies in place. Like, you’ll see, some stations will tell you that the next train is two stations away or something like that, but it can’t really tell you the time because the technology hasn’t arrived. It helps. Remember, we’re overlaying all of this technology on a system that is more than 100 years old, and it takes time, so we’re trying to catch up. You come back in 5, 10, 15 years: they’ll all have countdown clocks. It’s all in the planning.
Q:
If you could change one behavior of the train iding public, what would it be?
A:
I’ve thought about this a lot! Isn’t there an etiquette rule that when you’re walking you should walk to the right, instead of just smashing into people? The other one I hate is when the people take up residence at the door and you try to get on and they don’t move. There should be a book on train etiquette. It’s courtesy.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
