NEWS RELEASE
Riders Group Issues Yearly “State of the Subways Report” Card
Best: The Q with ‘Line Rating’ of $1.25; Worst: The C With 65¢ Rating;
Ratings Up on 14 of 19 Lines; Subways Are Improving, Says Group
Fewer Breakdowns, Better Regularity and Cleaner Cars;
But Crowding Remains Intolerable and Announcements Grow Worse
"The subways are improving, with fewer breakdowns, more regular service, and cleaner cars," said campaign staff attorney Gene Russianoff, noting that 14 of 19 subway lines received higher Line Ratings. "But you are still just as likely to be packed in like sardines and even more likely to be kept uninformed on the subways." The report found crowding remained at "intolerable" levels, with riders having only a 28% chance of getting a seat during rush hours. Russianoff said service has not kept up with an explosive 29% increase in ridership since 1996. Transit officials have increased service only 11%, he noted. The report also found no improvement in the length of scheduled waits during rush hour. The average rush-hour "headway"—the scheduled interval between trains—remained at more than six minutes. Russianoff noted that five former city transportation commissioners had recently called for moving to a city-wide standard of no more than a four-minute wait on any subway line. The profiles report six measures of service, based on recent data from MTA New York City Transit, largely covering the last half of 2000. The measures for each line are: the amount of scheduled service and the regularity of train arrivals; mechanical failures of subway cars; the chance of getting a seat at the most congested point; the cleanliness of cars; and the adequacy of announcements. The Straphangers Campaign Line Ratings are based on a formula developed in consultation with independent transportation experts and are intended to be a shorthand tool to compare lines. A line could receive a rating of $1.50 if it scored, on average, in the top 5% on the six measures of service.
2. The worst subway line is the C—with a Line Rating of 65 cents. It replaced the 5 as the worst line in our last report. The C line performed below average on four measures: amount of service; chance of getting a seat during rush hour; car breakdowns; and adequate subway car announcements. The C line did not receive a lower rating because it arrives with a high degree of regularity and its cars are cleaner than the system average. The line operates between northern Manhattan and East New York, Brooklyn, but does not run at night. 3. The subways improved in the last year: Our Line Ratings went up on 14 of 19 subway lines; ratings declined on only two; and stayed the same on three. The 14 lines with better ratings are the: 1/9, 2, 3, 5, 6, A, B, D, E, F, L, N, Q and R. The two lines with worse ratings are the: 7 and the J/Z. The three unchanged lines are the: 4, C and M. 4. Why the overall improvement? The subways grew slightly more regular, had much fewer breakdowns, and had cleaner cars. Regularity of service—how often trains arrive without bunching or gaps in service—improved from 77% to 79%; the distance that subway cars travel on average without breakdowns leaped from 86,843 miles in 1999 to 110,586 miles in 2000; and 85% of subway cars were clean in 2000 compared to 75% in 1999. 5. The subways remain crowded: A rider’s chance of getting a seat at the most crowded rush-hour point continued at 28%, down from 31% two years ago. Ten lines grew more crowded: 4, 5, 7, B, E, J/Z, L, M, Q, and R. Nine lines grew less crowded: 1/9, 2, 3, 6, A, C, D, F, and N. There was also no improvement in scheduled times between trains during rush hours. Russianoff said that rush-hour crowding remains intolerably high because service has lagged behind exploding ridership. MTA officials admit that subway ridership has increased 29% between 1996 and 2001, but has been met with only an 11% increase in service—with much of that targeted to nights and weekends. The lag is due to two factors: ungenerous crowding standards set by transit officials and a lack of capacity, including a shortage of subway cars and an aged signal system. 6. Results for the passenger environment were mixed: Subway cars grew cleaner in the last year, but announcements were poorer:
7. Measures of reliability improved: Subway cars broke down less often and were more regular, with fewer bunched trains or gaps in service:
8. The most improved line is the D; its Line Rating went from 85 cents to $1.20. The D showed improvement on four measures: greater regularity, a lower car breakdown rate, less crowding, and cleaner cars. The D more than doubled the distance its cars travel between breakdowns, going from 114,743 miles between mechanical failures to 244,684 miles. Announcements grew worse on the line and its scheduled service remained the same. 9. Only two lines declined, the 7 and J/Z: The line rating for the 7 declined from $1.05 to a 95 cent rating and the J/Z dropped from 95 cents to 85 cents. The 7 arrived more irregularly, was more crowded, broke down more often and provided poorer announcements. However, cleanliness on the 7 improved and there was no change in amount of service. The J/Z line was more crowded and provided poorer announcements. 10. There are great disparities in how subway lines perform. For example, the Q had the best record on delays caused by car mechanical failures: once every 276,476 miles. The G line had the worst, experiencing breakdown delays four times as often: once every 65,477 miles. The same wide disparities among lines could be seen for all our measures: For cleanliness: The M and D were the cleanest lines, with 6% of their cars having moderate or heavy dirt, while 32% of cars on the A, the dirtiest line, had moderate or heavy dirt—a huge range.
The Straphangers Campaign’s work to rate the quality of subway and bus service is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is a leader in supporting the assessment of government services. Click here to read the full report.
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