Once outside the booths, the agents will have face-to-face engagement with New Yorkers, and their needs, demands and attitudes. By contract, agents in New York must remain in or near their booths because they are part of the stations department. Instead, tens of thousands were delayed while agents stood by in station booths or on mezzanines. To ask a station agent, passengers have to go to the booths outside the turnstiles because the agents generally do not go to the platforms. Mr. Echevarria said that the 2008-2009 recession, when hundreds of stations agents were laid off, showed their vulnerability.

Source: New York Times December 28, 2017 20:29 UTC