Critics said the planned cutback, on the weekday G line from Brooklyn to Queens, endangered passengers in the event of crime. But the arbitrator, citing an earlier ruling, ruled that the cutback violated the union's contract.

Both the union and the authority said the arbitrator's ruling was narrow and did not create a precedent to stop the authority's campaign to reduce staffing on the train.

Separately, the authority said yesterday that subway ridership had risen 1.5 percent from the year earlier to 1.45 billion trips. It is the highest level since the Eisenhower administration, when ridership reached a record 1.5 billion trips in 1953.

In a statement, Lawrence G. Reuter, the transit authority president, attributed the rise to more tourists, a resilient economy, fare discounts and what he called "ongoing improvements and upgrades" to the subway system.

Bus ridership, however, fell 4.2 million trips to 736.4 million, a drop of nearly 0.6 percent from the year-ago level.

In 1994, the union and the authority agreed on three criteria to determine when trains could resort to one-person train operation.

First, the train had to be shorter than the typical 8- to-10-car train so that a motorman could see the full length of the train. The union and the authority agreed on a train of less than 300 feet, typically four cars.

The other criteria were low-traffic stations so platforms were not crowded and, similarly, nonrush times to reduce distractions for the motorman.

The Times Square shuttle runs one-person at off-peak hours, for example, and the M train runs that way on weekends, while the Lefferts shuttle on the No. 5 line does so after midnight.

Last August, a state arbitrator, Richard Adelman, ruled that the authority could not remove the conductor from the L line from Manhattan to Brooklyn because the line was not specifically cited in the 1994 agreement.

In the most recent ruling, dated Wednesday, Mr. Adelman ruled that the authority could not pull conductors off the G line because to do so would run the train one-person at a high-traffic time, namely weekdays, in violation of the contract. The ruling was reported yesterday in The Daily News.

The authority had argued that the wording of the contract permitted one-person operation both weekdays and weekends. "We obviously disagree with the arbitrator's decision," Charles F. Seaton, a transit spokesman, said in an interview.

Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers' union, said in an interview that the ruling was "a big victory for riders and for our members in terms of safety and security."

But he doubted that the authority would quit its plan to reduce staffing and observed that the rank and file's rejection of the December contract meant the issue was still a live one.

"Binding arbitration is a minefield," he said. The rejected contract effectively ended one-person trains, he said. "But now the authority can introduce any argument on the grounds of safety and security" in arbitration hearings.

Ruling derails TA plans to cut G train conductors

DAILY NEWS: February 10, 2006
BY PETE DONOHUE, STAFF WRITER

The transit workers union has won another battle to keep conductors on subways - securing a legal order directing the Transit Authority not to gut G train crews, the Daily News has learned.

The TA last year announced plans to take conductors off weekday G-line trains, which run through Queens and Brooklyn. That would leave motormen to drive the rigs, operate doors at stations and monitor platforms during departures.

But an arbitrator ruled Wednesday that the staffing cut violates a previous agreement with Transport Workers Union Local 100. Motormen can't safely perform all those tasks, and conductors are needed to help out in emergencies, such as train evacuations, the union has argued.

"It's another victory for the safety and security of riders and workers," Local 100 President Roger Toussaint said yesterday.

The same arbitrator ruled in August that the TA wrongly took conductors off L trains - and ordered they be returned.

The TA disagrees with both decisions, an agency spokesman said.

The TA operates one-person crews on a handful of shuttles and trains that are shorter than the normal eight-car configurations - but only at times when ridership doesn't go beyond a fixed limit. That includes the G line on weekends.

The only avenue left for the TA to expand the so-called "one person train operation," according to the union, is if the union agrees to it - which Toussaint vowed will never happen on his watch.

Transit and union officials agreed to a tentative contract in December that was silent on conductors' roles. By default, that meant their jobs couldn't be changed or eliminated, union officials contend. But that pact, which followed an illegal three-day strike, was rejected last month by just seven votes.

Conductors and motormen who stood to win a measure of job security under the contract, voted against the deal by the largest margins of any other transit worker group.