that are vacant. This includes three empty stands on the Second Avenue Subway that opened that year. Connections Rapid transit and rail connections are available at designated stations to Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road, AirTrain JFK, Metro-North Railroad, New Jersey Transit and PATH. Connections to the Staten Island Ferry and privately operated ferries such as NYC Ferry, NY Waterway and New York Water Taxi, as well as intercity and commuter bus lines at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal, are also available. Free MetroCard-only transfers to buses are available to MTA New York City Transit buses (including the bus rapid transit Select Bus Service), MTA Bus Company, NICE buses (Nassau County) and Bee-Line buses (Westchester County). Station management In 2018, New York City Transit president Andy Byford implemented a "group station manager" program, where 24 people would be hired to oversee up to 25 stations. This replaced a previous system where station managers could be responsible for up to 100 stations. Group station managers were generally responsible for coordinating repairs and operations, as well as providing customer service in each of the stations under their purview. These group station managers had repaired over 62,000 issues by early 2020. Station platforms and configurations Out of the system's stations, 283 are underground, 149 are elevated, 20 are in open cuts, 7 are at-grade, and 13 are on embankments. A typical subway station has waiting platforms ranging from long, though some IND platforms may be as long as long. Platforms of former commuter rail stations, such as those on the IND Rockaway Line, are even longer. Due to the large number of transit lines, one platform or set of platforms often serves more than one service (unlike other rapid transit systems including the Paris Metro, but like some lines on the London Underground). A passenger needs to look at the signs hung at the platform entrance steps and over each track to see which trains stop there and when, and at the arriving train to see which train it is. Almost everywhere express trains run, they run on the inner one (of 3) or two (of 4) tracks, and local trains run on the outer two tracks. In a 3-track configuration, the center track can be used toward the center of the city in the morning and away from the center in the evening, though not every 3-track