Council Members Want Grades for Subway Stations

Some City Council members are pushing for subway station grading system similar to the one used to rate restaurants’ cleanliness – but the MTA is red-lighting the proposal.

City Council member Peter Koo suggested the system during a budget hearing on Wednesday.

“I don’t see any reason how the MTA could refuse to give us a transparent grade for every subway station,” committee chair James Vacca said following the hearing. “As part of the fare increase, straphangers want to know what are they getting.”

Lois Tendler, the MTA’s director of government and Community Relations, said she’d consider the idea. But a spokesman later shot down the idea.

“We’re not doing it,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.

The MTA noted the authority has a numerical system to rate subway stations as part of its monthly evaluation called “Passenger Environment Survey – Key Performance Indicator” (PDF).

It doesn’t rate individual stations.

A spokesman for the MTA said station-by-station evaluations would require additional staff and wouldn’t provide valuable information to straphangers.

"When you go into a subway station, you see everything: rodents, peeling paint -- that’s there for riders to see,” Ortiz said. “There’s no need to provide a letter grade to quantify that."