Just one day after a subway fare increase went into effect, top MTA officials are admitting that service on the mass transit network is “not where it needs to be."
Carmen Bianco, MTA's NYC Transit president, acknowledged publicly this week, "We can do better than where we are today." And business publication Crain’s New York reported that Joseph Leader, the senior vice president of New York City’s subways, said in an MTA board meeting Monday that service was lagging.
According to a monthly MTA operations report, weekday trains in January have finished their routes late 26 percent of the time, nearly 5 points higher than the percentage of late trains over the previous month.
Trains from the same month reached their final stop late about 33 percent more often than they did in January of 2014, the report found.
Record ridership has led to crowding so bad that the MTA has added platform workers with flashlights to let the conductor know that people are still trying to squeeze onto the train.
"It's absolutely ridiculous," said subway rider Victor LaBoy. "It's a madhouse."
College student Rosemary Calloway says she's late to school every day because of train trouble. And a rider named Amal said he now totally avoids riding the subway during rush hour because "I don't like being squished."
Local
The problems have been accentuated by a recent string of one-off disruptions. Broken rails, underground fires and signal problems have caused rippling delays on multiple occasions over the winter, knotting up service across multiple lines and causing reverberating delays that would stretch for hours.
John Raskin of the Riders Alliance advocacy group is now asking commuters to send their subway horror stories so that the group can deliver tales of the worst travels to Gov. Cuomo.
"Everybody complains. We should complain to people who matter," he said.
The MTA has ordered its managers to show some improvement in the next two months -- a good sign, according to Second Ave Sagas transit blogger Ben Kabak.
"To ignore it is just to bury their heads in the sand," he said. "So it's good they're admitting a problem and trying to come up with an action plan."
The problems have added to what is the nation’s longest workweek. According to a report issued by Comptroller Scott Stringer, New Yorkers spend more than 6 hours a week commuting to and from work. And the rising subway fares -- on Sunday, the base subway fare was increased by about 10 percent -- has only added insult to injury for many frustrated commuters.
