A Man with a PLAN

A Man with a PLAN 36 BOSTONIA Fall 2018 hen New York City offered big money to fix its failing subway, winning solutions came from industry Goliaths. And one David. By Sara Rimer Photograph by Alex Flynn 37 BOSTONIA Fall 2018 hen he arrived at the launch of the dubbed him a “transit enthusiast.”) Genius Transit Challenge, Craig Ave- Contest entries had to in- disian felt like David in a midtown clude steps for testing and im- Manhattan ballroom full of Goliaths. plementing, in a matter of The contest, with total prize money of years—not decades, the typical time- $3 million, was open to anyone with table of earlier modernization ideas for improving New York City’s schemes. Avedisian’s 30-page, single- antiquated, maddeningly slow, miser- spaced entry was festooned with foot- ably overcrowded, chronically under- notes and detailed plans for solutions funded, debt-ridden subway system. ranging from reconfiguring subway Outsiders were welcome. No idea was yards (to accommodate the longer A Transit Buff too crazy. technology—and trains) to educating commuters about Is Born then rode his bike CEOs of transportation companies 2,000 miles across how to use his color-coded system of Craig Avedisian had jetted in from Paris, London, Europe. cars and platforms. He had meticu- (LAW’93) was Zurich, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. They lously calculated the cost, from the in kindergarten TRANSPORTATION, when his parents talked in their own lingo about dwell CITY PLANNING, low end, at $11,762,186,250, to the high, gave him an HO times and forced block signaling. The AND LAW including options, at $17,039,186,250. model train set for ballroom’s preferred seating rows He decided there It’s a bargain, says Avedisian. To un- Christmas. The wasn’t enough actu- Sante Fe passenger filled up with teams from multibillion- al piloting involved derstand the concept of a bargain here, line had cars that dollar transportation titans Bom- in commercial it might help to know that the recently would light up, with flying, and he found passengers in the bardier (66,000 employees), Bechtel work in California, completed first phase of the new Sec- windows, he recalls. (50,000), and Beijing-based CRRC as a manager at a ond Avenue line cost $2.5 billion per Even now, he takes (183,000), merely the world’s largest courier business, mile. “The Most Expensive Mile of three days before a dock supervi- New York each Christmas supplier of rail transit equipment. sor at a trucking Subway Track on Earth,” the to rig up 90 feet Then there was Avedisian (1). company, and an Times called it. “This will increase ca- of Lionel track, a A commercial litigator with a life- urban planning pacity 36 to 65 percent, depending on birthday gift from consultant in San his wife 15 years long passion for mass transit, 54-year- Francisco. Then the subway line,” Avedisian says. And ago, around the old Avedisian (LAW’93) had been rid- came BU School of it could be completed in a decade or family’s 13-by-23- ing the city’s subways for 22 years. He’d Law and work as a so, with the first line up and running foot living room. lawyer at the Na- taken the Second Avenue line from tional Transporta- in just four years. PLANES AND his Upper East Side apartment that day tion Safety Board in The corporate winners issued press BICYCLES in late June 2017, armed with ideas for Washington, D.C. releases gloating about their hon- Avedisian earned a In 1995, he private pilot’s cer- increasing passenger capacity by add- moved to New ors. Avedisian, who brought his wife, tificate at 17 and a ing cars and more efficiently open- York and joined a two children, ages 11 and 14, and his commercial pilot’s ing and closing subway doors. “I was small law firm (he mother-in-law to the victory ceremony certificate two years also sold his car, a later. He graduated excited when I walked in,” Avedisian Volkswagen Jetta, at City Hall, sent an email to his rela- in three years from remembers. “I was intimidated when and took his first tives. No press release needed: with Florida Institute of ride on the subway). Technology with a I walked out.” He opened a solo critics carping about the corporate degree in air com- Eight months and two rounds of practice in Manhat- insider winners and dismissing the merce and flight judging later, the Metropolitan Trans- tan in 2002. SR contest as a PR stunt dreamed up by portation Authority (MTA), which New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, runs the subways and sponsored the who oversees the MTA and was among contest, announced that out of 438 sub- those being blamed for the subway’s missions by contestants from 23 coun- woes, coverage in the New York Times, tries, Bechtel and CRRC were among the Daily News, National Public Radio, the eight winners in three categories. and others featured Avedisian. Craig Avedisian To his astonishment, so was (LAW’93), a com- Avedisian. headline in the Times declared, “He mercial litigator, has a lifelong He had tied with CRRC and CSin- Answered a Call for Geniuses, and the passion for mass TRANS, an international provider of MTA Says He Might Be One.” transit. His idea transit technology solutions, in the Not so fast. Some of the subway’s for improving New York City’s MTA subway car innovation category; each six million daily riders took to Tran- grew out of years of had won $330,000 in prize money. He sit Twitter and other online forums riding the subway had beaten out Bombardier, with its to knock down his plan. “This is the and studying its problems. 70-plus years of global transportation dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” one of breakthroughs. them posted in response to an MTA Avedisian was one of only two indi- YouTube video of Avedisian summa- vidual winners and the only one with rizing his idea. no ties to industry. (MTA announce- “They haven’t read the full propos- ments, in a slight understatement, al,” says Avedisian. The document, he 38 BOSTONIA Fall 2018 Doors Open Doors Open A Station Doors Open Doors Open B Station concedes, makes for dense reading. attracts loads and loads of wannabes,” But the plan itself “is very simple, How It Works he says. “In particular, transit and very scalable.” Avedisian says his trains have attracted the imaginations It hinges on a system of opening and idea increases pas- of millions of people.” closing car doors to allow passenger senger capacity and For example, any New York history more efficiently loading and unloading, called selective opens and closes buff knows the famous story of one of door opening, or SDO. As Avedisian doors. The plan those tinkerers, Alfred Ely Beach, and points out, the London Underground hinges on a system the fan-propelled pneumatic subway called selective already uses SDO successfully. In the door opening he built in secret in the late 1860s. video, he explains how it would work in (SDO). A 10-car Avedisian predicts his SDO plan train, for example, New York: a 10-car train, for instance, would be length- would help the subways to run faster would be lengthened to 14 cars. But ened to 14 cars. But and carry more people—by reducing New York’s subway platforms are built New York’s subway overcrowding and making it easier platforms are built to accommodate shorter trains—and for shorter trains. to get on and off. “There is simply no it would cost a fortune to lengthen So, when a 14-car other known idea that can increase the platforms. So, when a 14-car SDO SDO train stops at capacity this dramatically, this fast, an “A” station (top), train stops at an “A” station, doors on doors on the first this economically, in such a targeted just the first 10 cars open to unload and 10 cars open. At the way, and with so little disruption,” his load passengers. At the next station (a next station—a “B” proposal says. station (bottom)— “B” station), the doors of the last 10 the doors of the last His idea grew out of years of rid- cars open. And so on. Doors on middle 10 cars open. Doors ing the subway (and before that, as a cars—known as unlimited cars—open on the middle School of Law student, Boston’s aging cars open at every at every stop. stop. The plan, Green Line) and studying its problems Got it? Avedisian says, “is in his spare time. “I worked on this at very simple, very home, at the office, on vacation,” he scalable.” iders can travel “from any station to says. “I’ve thought about it all over any station just as they do now,” Ave- the place.” disian explains, as long as they board His wife, Carla Van de Walle, a law- a car whose doors open at their des- yer with a master’s degree in urban tination. Cars and platforms will be planning, backs that up. “He’d get up color-coded red for A stations, blue in the middle of the night to look at for B stations, and green for unlimited Google aerial maps of different storage cars. “There will be user-friendly signs yards in the outer boroughs,” she says. all over the place,” he says. Now, his proposal to improve the SDO technology ensures that the cor- system stands a chance of becoming a rect doors open and close.

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