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New York Daily News Huh? Next stop, gorbghzzbnik. The subway's announcement system - where important information too often comes out as garbled squawks - has gotten even worse over the last year, according to a new report. So, in the communications capital of the world, one-third of subway announcements are unintelligible, too low to be heard or simply never made, the Straphangers Campaign charges. That's up from 27% last year. The Transit Authority hotly disputed the findings - but
conceded that even its own surveys found that announcements don't make it
to riders'
ears 14% of the time. "They don't make any announcements whatsoever," said Joe Pena, 32, a city worker from the Bronx. "It can be confusing. You could miss your stop ... and you could be late." The B in B train stands for Bad, according to the Straphangers Campaign, which ranked the line the worst in the city, with just 42% of announcements of station names and transfers getting through. "It's very low, and you can barely hear it," Peter Gonzalez, 21, a guard from Brooklyn, said on an uptown B train. "You don't know the stop unless you are looking." The No. 6 train, which has new cars featuring automated, recorded announcements, had the top success rate - 99%. "Riders need better announcements to get around the system and to cope with delays and reroutings," said Neysa Pranger, who oversaw the survey, conducted from late March to late July. Getting information was even harder during delays or service disruptions. In more than three of four incidents, conductors were silent or announcements were garbled or useless - such as, "We're being held by supervision," according to the report. "In the age of terrorism, blackouts and massive subway reconstruction, announcements should be getting better, not worse," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney with the Straphangers Campaign. The Transit Authority strongly disputed the group's findings, saying its survey found that conductors made clear announcements 86% of the time. In a statement, the agency also said it routinely repairs public-address systems and trains and retrains conductors on making announcements, and rejected claims that some delay announcements were useless.
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