After increasing fares this weekend, the MTA added insult to injury with a new report that shows trains delays have increased over the past year. DNAinfo analyzed the report and found that “about 20 percent of trains were late” in 2014, with medium and major delays increasing to 12.5 percent from 10 percent in 2013.
Here were the worst offenders:
The tardiest lines in 2014 were the 5 and 6 where 32.5 and 31 percent of trains respectively were delayed, the MTA said.
That’s up from 29.3 percent for the 5 and 23.3 percent for the 6 the previous year.
Moderate and major delays comprised most of the tardiness on both lines with 22.6 percent of 5 trains arriving 50 to 100 percent later than they were supposed to, officials said. For the 6, that figure was 22.5 percent.
The delays happened during the same year the MTA broke single day ridership records five times in one month, and according to spokesperson Kevin Ortiz, that’s not a coincidence. “Are we seeing increased delays? Yes we are. The main reason is increased is ridership,” he said. “”The amount of the time it takes for a train to pull into a station, open the doors and let passengers on and off increases with ridership.”
But critics of the MTA point not to ridership, but to the agency’s debt and outdated technology. John Raskin, executive director of subway and bus rider activist group Riders Alliance, told DNAinfo: “The MTA, unfortunately, has only enough funding to put Band-Aids on the problem. We need new funding to buy new equipment and modernize the system.”
It might be a while until the MTA sorts out this headache.
