a288  2058  26 Nov 88
BC-APN--Subway Comeback, ADV 11,1164
$Adv11
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For Release Sunday, Dec. 11
From AP Newsfeatures
(APN SUNDAY ILLUSTRATIONS: Mailed print subscribers get 4 b&w photos.
ColorFoto subscribers get 2 35mm slides.)
    
    EDITOR'S NOTE - Despite what most people think, the American Public
Transit Association recently cited the New York subway system as the
most improved system on the continent and the man in charge received
the manager of the year award. And despite the way the subway is
pictured on TV, filmmakers are having a hard time finding the
once-familiar graffiti sprayed on subway cars. What's going on in New
York's underground?
    
By MARJORIE ANDERS
Associated Press Writer
    NEW YORK (AP) - Tune in ''The Equalizer'' and see a young girl
stalked by an attacker in a shadowy subway stop. Watch ''Cagney &
Lacey'' chase a suspect through a crowded train, or a video dancer
paint the name of Michael Jackson's album ''Bad'' on the wall of a
Brooklyn station.
    These images of the subway as a filthy bastion of thugs are
powerful. Only 25 percent of Americans surveyed thought the subways
are safe, and only one in three said they would use the underground
when visiting New York.
    But the subway is getting a bad rap, according to Transit Authority
officials. They say determined management and a $12 billion capital
improvement program have resulted in a major success story of the
1980s - the rebirth of the New York subway system as a relatively
reliable, clean and safe mode of transportation.
    ''The turnaround and the elimination of graffiti from the subway
system has been near miraculous,'' says Mayor Edward I. Koch.
    Officials say subway reliability is five times better than it was
five years ago. Today 94 percent of all cars are clean and free of
graffiti. And less than 3 percent of the city's crimes occur in the
subway, which is used by 3.6 million people daily.
    Plenty of problems remain. Derailments are up after a four-year
decline. The homeless use the subways as dormitories. Beggars harass
passengers. And thieves jam turnstiles and steal tokens.
    And New Yorkers - half of whom ride the subways daily - remain
skeptical. A Transit Authority survey found they believe serious
crimes occur in the subway twice as often as they actually do.
    Some notorious crimes have fueled that fear: Bernhard Goetz gunned
down four teen-agers; a violinist's hand was severed when she was
pushed in front of a subway.
    But there is no disputing that the system's decline has finally been
stemmed. Gleaming new stainless steel cars and sturdy rehabilitated
ones painted proud red are rolling across 230 miles of track that
gradually is being replaced.
    The most noticeable change is the eradication of graffiti.
    Four years ago, there was not a single subway car in New York that
was not scarred with spray paint. Graffiti was in vogue at the time
and was considered, in some circles, an art form.
    Transit Authority President David Gunn declared war on graffiti,
ordering cars be cleaned one at a time. If a clean car was sprayed
again, it was removed from service and recleaned. He frustrated
legions of teen-aged spray painters proud of their rolling
''canvases.''
    Gunn is proud of the accomplishment.
    He likes to tell of a recent meeting between TA officials, the
mayor's liaison with the movie and television industry and a group of
major producers who wanted to deface subway cars for filming
purposes.
    ''I said, 'No.' They said, 'What do you mean, no?' And I said, 'I
mean no.' And the car department people were cheering me on,'' Gunn
says.
    ''They said they'd use water colors to mark up the trains and
re-create graffiti and clean up afterward. But we are not going to
let them go in and mark up trains - re-create the nightmare.
    ''If there is a graffitied train, they can use it. I can't stop them
from taking a picture. If they want to get footage of dirty subway
cars, they'd better hurry up because they aren't going to be around
much longer.''
    Not everyone is convinced that Gunn's approach is best.
    ''He still firmly believes in the cosmetics rather than the reality
of the system,'' says Sonny Hall, president of the Transport Workers
Union. ''He extended the preventative maintenance of the buses from
every 4,000 miles to 8,000 miles, but he won't let a bus go out if it
has gum on the floor, even if that means a gap in service.''
    Still, the turnaround has made an impression on the American Public
Transit Association, an industry group representing managers of
transit systems in the United States and Canada.
    At a recent meeting in Montreal, the TA was cited as the most
improved system on the continent and Gunn received the manager of the
year award.
    ''The graffiti that had become the TA's international identification
mark has been nearly eliminated,'' says APTA Chairman Reba Malone, a
board member of VIA Transit in San Antonio, Texas. ''The industry
looks with pride at the New York City Transit Authority.''
    But getting the message to the public has proved more difficult.
    The TA now is using sophisticated market research and slick
advertising to change public perceptions.
    ''The image of the New York City transit system is outdated across
the nation,'' says John Linder, director of marketing for the TA's
parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. ''But there
is no national advertising for the same reason that there is no
citywide advertising...We're not ready to advertise.''
    Although the system is open 24 hours a day and serves a huge
territory from the Bronx to the Rockaways, not all lines have been
rehabilitated.
    One recent ad campaign promoted six of the system's 26 lines, three
on Manhattan's East Side and three on the West Side that are
consistently rated the best by straphangers.
    The ads urged business riders to use the subways during midday hours
as a speedy alternative to a taxi stalled in traffic.
    The $1 million ad campaign was developed at the mayor's request to
try to ease midtown traffic and air pollution. The MTA considers it
money well spent.
    Some positive exposure is free.
    Michelob and Miller beers both chose the TA's sleek, stainless steel
subways cars as settings for their television commercials.
    The Style section of the Washington Post and Women's Wear Daily, a
fashion trade publication, published this tip: It's hip to ride the
subways.
    And Merrill Lynch, one of the major underwriters of MTA bonds,
produced a glitzy marketing video for potential bond buyers that
glowingly outlines the progress made, most of it financed by the sale
of bonds.
    Merrill Lynch ''wouldn't have touched us with a 10-foot pole five
years ago,'' Gunn says.
    END ADV
 
 
AP-NY-11-26-88 2324EST
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a289  2058  26 Nov 88
BC-APN--Subway Comeback-Gunn, ADV 11,0614
$Adv11
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For Release Sunday, Dec. 11
From AP Newsfeatures
With BC-APN--Subway Comeback
    
By MARJORIE ANDERS
Associated Press Writer
    NEW YORK (AP) -  David Gunn oversees the largest subway system in
the world with the enthusiam of a boy playing with a new electric
train found under the Christmas tree.
    ''I have always liked big machines,'' Gunn says unabashedly. ''It's
not just trains. I mean, I always liked steamships. And I liked
trollies and buses, things like that, big trucks.''
    A mass transit advocate in word and deed, the 51-year-old Gunn does
not own a car. And although his $140,000-a-year position as president
of the Transit Authority entitles him to a chauffeured agency car, he
prefers to get around on subways and buses.
    Gunn is so dedicated that when his 83-year-old mother visits from
Boston, he meets her train at Penn Station and they take the subway
to Park Slope, one of Brooklyn's genteel neighborhoods where he has a
duplex co-op. ''I carry the bags,'' Gunn says.
    When he first came to New York 4 1/2 years ago, Gunn rode the rails for
hours, trouble-shooting and getting to know the system first-hand.
    Gunn, whose favorite tie has a subway token motif, personally
answers virtually every letter of complaint. He receives about 10 a
day.
    ''Usually I just apologize,'' he says.
    The son of a stock broker, Gunn grew up in Boston and spent his
childhood summers visiting his grandparents in Nova Scotia. It was
there, hitching rides on the Dominion Atlantic Railroad, that he fell
in love with trains.
    ''I was a little kid and my father was friends with some of the crew
and I got to know the conductor,'' he says. ''I'd spend the night in
the caboose, eat with the guys. It was an all-day trip. The coach was
one of these real old coaches with kerosene lamps, a coal potbellied
stove and a steam engine and I'd get to ride in the engine and blow
the whistle, the whole bit. It was fun.''
    After earning an MBA degree from Harvard, he joined the Atchinson
Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in 1964. Positions with the New York
Central and the Illinois Central railways followed and then rapid
transit systems in Boston and Philadelphia.
    On Feb. 1, 1984 Gunn took over a system in crisis. New York's fleet
of 3,600 buses and 6,200 subway cars, 703 miles of track and 463
stations were falling apart.
    With single-minded determination and a lack of concern for personal
popularity, he demanded change and gained an anti-union reputation.
    ''While Gunn certainly doesn't have any sympathy for labor, he does
have it for the worker individually,'' says Sonny Hall, president of
the Transit Authority's largest union, Local 100 of the Transport
Workers Union.
    Between union concerns, politics and running a railroad, Gunn has
time for little else.
    ''I have very little social life outside of this place. I am
probably, basically, a loner,'' says Gunn, a bachelor who goes to bed
at 9:30 p.m. and gets up before dawn. He's a self-taught cook -
''otherwise you starve'' - and admits to coupon clipping. He likes to
shop in Chinatown.
    When he's not in New York, he weekends at his cabin in the White
Mountains of New Hampshire.
    ''I try to backpack every other weekend, winter and summer, pretty
religiously,'' says the lean six-footer. ''It's a good way to relieve
whatever stress builds up.''
    Is his a stressful job?
    ''There must be a more stressful job somewhere,'' Gunn says,
laughing.
    END ADV
 
 
AP-NY-11-26-88 2343EST
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