Ticket to chide: can Kiley shake up the Tube?

To any American travelling in London, it might come as a surprise that anyone in charge of running the New York city subway system could lend any expertise in modernising London's system.

With some of New York's train cars as many as 40 years old, dilapidated platforms that freeze in winter and boil in summer and handicap access available at just a few select stations, one would be hard pressed to find just how New York's system is better than London's on any front.

Indeed, commuting via the Tube is downright pleasant compared to the average Big Apple subway experience, which requires most rush-hour commuters to endure a crush of people, navigating narrow platforms and packing themselves into cramped cars.

The good ol' days

But for those who remember the early 1980s, New York's subway system is head and shoulders above the graffiti-riddled and breakdown-prone system it used to be.

Much of the credit due for New York's improved subways during the 1980s goes to Mr Kiley, who is generally viewed as rescuing the city's subway system from decades of neglect.

"He had a tremendous positive impact on the system," says Steve Weber, senior transportation planner with the Regional Plan Association, which scrutinises urban planning in the New York City region.

Sweaty, crowded and dilapidated: The subway has improved

When Mr Kiley took over the reins of the MTA in 1984, the major features of the city's subways was the spray paint, which covered every square inch of the cars, and the smell of urine, as the city's homeless took to using the trains and stations as toilets as well as a place to sleep.

Track fires and derailments were commonplace, and lights within the cars often didn't work, plunging riders into complete darkness when cars entered tunnels that run under the East River.

In the face of all this, Mr Kiley launched a tremendous rescue plan to restore the subway system. "It's really analogous to the challenge he's taken on with London transport," Mr Weber says.

Credit due

Mr Kiley went to work, overseeing and designing a plan that invested over $20 billion dollars into New York's subways during the 1980s.

"He had to do that with the system under 24-hour operation," Mr Weber says. "It was just a monumental accomplishment what he was able to achieve."

New York's transport system is arguably the most complex in the world. Today, the subway's 6,000 cars carry 4.3 million people daily over 25 routes.

Mr Kiley began the subway's renewal by focusing on track work, lessening weekly derailments to a point where such events became newsworthy again in New York. Next came the replacing of the train cars. The last of the graffiti-ravaged cars was retired in 1988.

Kiley was a "nuts and bolts" manager

"He brought a level of professional management that hadn't existed in the MTA," says Joe Rappaport, who works in New York's Office of the Public Advocate, which acts as a liaison between the city's residents and its vast bureaucracy.

Mr Kiley has the ability to recognise talent and his management skills are above average, Mr Rappaport says.

Mr Kiley's efforts, directed at fixing the nuts and bolts of New York's ailing system, may not have been revolutionary but were certainly very necessary, Mr Rappaport says. "It was definitely a meat-and-potatoes sort of focus. But maybe it needed to be at that point."

But, he says, Mr Kiley's strength wasn't in dealing with the public or legislators -- something Londoners have witnessed in his dealing with British officials -- and he didn't place enough importance on moving some new initiatives forward.

"He's doesn't deserve credit for everything that has happened in New York," Mr Rappaport says. "But his reputation isn't completely undeserved."