As the Assistant Chief Transportation Officer for New York City Transit’s ‘A’ Division, Mr. Gaul was responsible for Transportation operations on the numbered lines. which included the Lexington Ave corridor, the most overcrowded rapid transit line in North America. During his tenure, he developed and directed a comprehensive program that improved subway service reliability and capacity on Lexington Ave by virtually all measures. This program included:
- Development of specialized service regulation and delay management procedures, especially designed for high volume corridors
- Implementation of a dwell time control program designed to increase capacity through reduced station dwell times. This included automatic dwell control announcements, the deployment of a specially trained force of platform controllers and ‘Step Aside’ platform markings at the most challenging locations, all supported by a customer communications campaign
- An enhanced sick customer response program which assigned Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) to the most critical locations in peak periods to expedite the response to sick customer incidents
- Additional investments in reduced trouble response times by maintenance of way and vehicle maintenance personnel
- Advocated more frequent Maintenance of Way (MOW) scheduled inspections based on train and passenger volume and the disruptive effect of even minor service delays
- The program was coordinated through the inter-departmental Lexington Ave Task Force which met regularly to critique incidents, analyze delay trends and advance recommendations for improvement.
