As part of We the Commuters, we've been asking listeners to share their comments, questions and concerns about the MTA with us. And the responses rolled in: over 300 over them. They were all delivered to the MTA at its July board meeting earlier this week. But we wanted to respond to some of the more persistent themes. Here's the overarching one:
"The unpredictable, patience-breaking, filthy, rat-infested, hot, dangerous, ancient and endlessly frustrating experience that is the New York City subway, which we take every day in place of cars, is unacceptable."
1) Does MTA even have a plan/roadmap to modernize the train signal system?
Signal delays accounts for 30 percent of all subway delays, and nearly half of the signals in the system are over 50 years old. So, part of the MTA's $836 million dollar "action plan" is to hone in and expedite repairs on the 1,300 most problematic signals, by the end of 2018. Water wasn't something anyone complained about, but water is huge problem for the MTA. Chairman Joe Lhota called it "the greatest enemy to an efficient subway system." Even on a day without rain, the MTA removes about 13 million gallons of water from subway tunnels. And trash can easily clog the drainage system--allowing water to build up--and that damages the electrical system causing signals to go out--delaying your ride until it's fixed.
2) When will all train lines have countdown clocks like the numbered subways????
According to the MTA, the general target is by the end of this year. But there's some breaking news on this front: they just went live on the C line. (Although you might not like what you see: the below picture is from Thursday's evening commute.)
It's taken a long time to get here. Because the subway system was built by three different entities, not all of its parts are interchangeable. One of those non-interchangeable things are the signals. The "A division" — the numbered lines — is older, and in the 1990s its signals got an overhaul that made countdown clocks possible. At the time, the MTA thought it would do something similar with the B division. But it's twice as big and — surprise — there were delays. So now the MTA is using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as a workaround. Clocks on the C and R lines are now live, both in stations and on the Subway Time app. Next month the agency is aiming for the E and G trains, and so on, so that by December, the final lines — the A, the 7, the Staten Island Railway and the Franklin Shuttle — will be conquered.
3) What are you doing to improve communications, informing customers of delays in real time and receiving information from riders?
One thing the agency is doing, which has apparently already started on the A and C lines, is providing specific and detailed information directly from the MTA to the subway car about why a train is delayed. No more canned language, like "we are delayed due to train traffic ahead of us," or "due to an earlier incident..." The MTA knows riders are sick of this. (So is MTA chair Joe Lhota, who told Brian Lehrer that when he's on a train and hears "I'm being held for 'train traffic,' I generally curse under my breath when I hear that because I don't know what train traffic is.") So, for example on the A line recently, when there was a person on the tracks, MTA command relayed information to the conductor, who gave updates to riders on how much longer it would take. Lhota said the MTA is also overhauling its digital communications, which means updating the aforementioned Subway Time — although even he admitted Google has the same info and does a better job of displaying it.
4) Why has air conditioning on the subway been malfunctioning so frequently these hot summer months? Why can't the MTA nail this basic service?
We don't have many opportunities to use the adjective "intransigent," but this is one of them. Broken air conditioning on subway cars has been a longstanding problem, particularly on the 1 and 6 lines. All you have to do is search Twitter for people tweeting to @nyctsubway. And what's really disheartening is that you see, on Twitter, the same car numbers being reported for being hot over and over again. Part of the problem is that it's not just the system that's old — the cars are old too, and new subway cars have been slow to come in. And the MTA doesn't have enough spare subway cars to provide service while it takes all the subway cars with broken air conditioners offline to fix them. So this will probably require new cars to solve. In the meantime, listeners, if you get into a hot subway car, keep tweeting the car number to @nyctsubway, or call 511 to report it.
5) My question for the MTA is why are the subway platforms so filthy? Why are they not power washed at least once every four weeks minimum? NYC is a first world city but it's subway platforms are absolutely disgusting and a disgrace to the city and to the MTA.
Let's start with trash: it's not the MTA's fault, it's you. There are hundreds of track fires every year, and a lot of them involve garbage. So, the MTA will be cleaning the entire system with these giant hoses and removing debris, which should reduce some of these fire hazards. As we mentioned water build up is a big problem so the MTA will be cleaning 40,000 street grates so water is properly diverted. But that's not going to get decades of grime off the ceilings or walls. As for banning food in the subway, Chairman Joe Lhota, when asked, said it's worth debating, but that's as far as that issue goes.
Just remember: when it comes to littering, you don't have to put up with it anymore.