photo from sgoralnick on flickr
The steadily declining condition of the subway system was a topic of discussion at Thursday’s NYC Transit Committee meeting.
“Every month we’re showing record ridership and we’re not putting any more service out there to accommodate the ridership,” said Andrew Albert, a board member. “Right now it is crush conditions.”
“I certainly am not going to disagree with that observation,” NYC Transit President Howard Roberts replied.
Trains are falling farther and farther behind since at least March 2006. It’s worst in the evening rush where NYC Transit rates itself as running 88% of trains on time in March — the most recent data available — down from almost 92% in March last year.
Roberts said the agency was going to adopt a procedure similar to Comstat program — used by the NYPD to track crime — and apply it to train performance and determine where and when the system runs into trouble.
“It becomes more acute when you look at the increase in ridership,” said board member Susan Metzger, who chaired the meeting. “When I’m on the subway there are more and more held doors.”
The number of delays is up as well — an average of 27% over the last 12 months. Delays are counted as any train “abandoned en-route, abandoned at the terminal, and arriving late to the terminal due to any incident.” Anything from a signal problem, a sick passenger or track work can cause a delay. Track work is the most common cause of delays. In March, delays spiked upward with 1,361 more incidents than February. Delays have been on the rise for a couple of years. There were 105,290 train delays in 2006, and 138,446 last year.
“Every time my blackberry goes off it seems like we’re having another signal problem on the 7 line,” Howard Roberts, NYC Transit president said.
Another indicator — the mean distance between failures, which is the number of miles divided by delays caused by the cars themselves — has a bleak prognosis. In March 2008, cars traveled 12% shorter distance before having a problem than they did during the same time last year.
The situation is worsened by the news that for the third straight month the MTA saw its revenue from real estate transactions drop below budget estimates.
