New York City’s subway trains are later than ever, and as the MTA Board grapples with these internal findings, the metrics are coming under question. What does it mean for a train to be late? Should we the straphanging public be concerned? Is subway service actually getting worse?

The news, as first reported by Michael Grynbaum at City Room and available in raw form this MTA Board document, goes something like this:

The Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 lines all recorded significant drops in on-time performance in March, the most recent month for which statistics were available, according to figures disclosed on Monday at an agency committee hearing. The numbered lines also performed worse than the lettered lines on nearly every major metric.

Nearly 90 percent of No. 3 trains were marked as “on time” in March 2010; one year later, only 71.8 percent of the line’s trains arrived on time. Compared with a year ago, the No. 2, 4 and 5 lines fell by 14 percent, and the No. 7 line, which has had significant problems because of troubles in its East River tunnel, dropped by 12.2 percent.

Over all, about 81 percent of trains on the numbered lines, including the Grand Central shuttle, were considered on time in March, a 10 percent drop from a year ago. That was far worse than both the BMT and IND lettered lines, the latter of which improved in March from a year ago. A subway train is considered on time if it reaches its terminal station within five minutes of its scheduled arrival.

Some of the board members were not pleased to hear this news. The recently-appointed Charles Moerdler, who has become a vocal member of the MTA oversight body not afraid to ask tough questions, pondered the root causes. “The IRT service continues to be pretty bad,” he said. “What long-term plans do we have to get that service up to snuff?”

Meanwhile, the story has been picked up by amNew York and New York 1, among others. Before we delve into the panic, let’s step back a bit. First, what does it mean to be late? Most straphangers just roll their eyes when told the subways are on any sort of schedule, and the MTA’s own metrics define a train as late if it arrives at the terminal after five minutes of its scheduled time.

In a vacuum, that’s not the most useful measure of anything. Wait assessments tell a better tale, and Transit head Thomas Prendergast recognized as much. “We’re still bound by the principle that evenness of service is by far the most important thing rather than just late, although we’d like to do both,” he said. “But evenness of service is more important because that way you’re having less impact on customers.”

Meanwhile, despite the hand-wringing, these numbers have improved between February and March. Far more 2, 4, 5 and 6 trains were on time in March than in February, and the 6 and 7 didn’t show statistically significant differences in on-time performance. Maybe then the story isn’t that trains are later; after all, a recent change in the way the MTA calculated “on-time performance” could account for the year-to-year difference. Maybe instead the story is off a small but incremental month-to-month improvement.

We’re still left though with the question of the quality of service, and Moerdler put it best. “The public really doesn’t give a damn whether the stats are right, or the stats are wrong,” he said. “If the service ain’t good, it ain’t good.” How ain’t good the service is remains a question without a solid answer.

When word got out that the MTA is planning on selling its headquarters in Manhattan to better utilize its existing real estate holdings, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz raised an eyebrow. He again reiterated his desire to see something — anything — happen at 370 Jay St.

He said:

“Since 2008, I, along with other elected officials and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, have called on the MTA to dispose of this property, which has remained nearly vacant and poorly maintained for more than a decade. The MTA’s response has been to reassert its desire to hold on to the property and to insist that the building is necessary for locating future back offices.

“Yet, while the rest of the surrounding business district has undergone tremendous and transformative growth, 370 Jay St. has languished in sidewalk scaffolding and a black scrim reaching to its highest floors to protect passersby from the structure’s crumbling facade.

The impact of this building’s neglect cannot be understated.”

The MTA’s internal report — entitled “MTA Office Space Portfolio Right-Sizing Business Plan” — features no mention of Transit’s Jay St. space, and the authority has long searched for the right funds to fix up the building. For now, it will continue to sit above a newly-renovated subway station but shrouded in scaffolding. One day, something might happen there, but it seems as though today is not that day.

Two weeks ago, subway riders in Queens had the pleasure of experience the pitfalls of aging infrastructure. Heavy rainfalls and what the MTA termed a “preexisting water condition” damaged 800 feet of track in the Manhattan-bound Steinway Tube, and thus the 7 train could not operate into the city.

Transit sent maintenance employees to conduct the emergency signal repair work that Friday, and until midnight on Sunday, crews worked feverishly to restore this important artery into Midtown Manhattan. To complete the repairs, Transit installed new insulating materials between the rails and track ties. This work included new wiring, removing and replacing the track rails, realigning the third rail and grouting the tunnel wall to prevent future leaks.

“Thanks to the dedication and hard work of hundreds of our employees, we were able to resume service in time for Monday’s rush period,” Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statement last week. “We thank our customers for their patience while we worked to correct this problem. Our top priority is customer safety, and a fully functional and dependable signaling system is a key component to running trains safely through our system.”

Part of the reason why Transit officials were so keen to praise their repair crews concerned the confined quarters in the Steinway Tube. Daily News transit reporter Pete Donohue took a tour of the tight tube for his column this week. He writes from inside the tunnel:

Looking west, subway tracks stretch thousands of feet toward Grand Central, a hazy blur of light looming like a star in the midnight sky. To the east, the rails run through the Steinway Tunnel, which was built at the turn of the century for electric trolley cars that carried riders under the East River between Manhattan and Long Island City, Queens. There are 13 other underwater tunnels in the city’s 468-station maze. They’re all unique, but Steinway has a dubious distinction. “This one gives us the most headaches,” NYC Transit President Tom Prendergast said as he walked the Manhattan-bound tube at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Trains had been halted between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. so track workers could inspect rails and other equipment. In the pitch black up ahead, the workers were identifiable only by their muffled voices and the beams of their flashlights, which bobbed up and down with each step like buoys rising and falling on a bay.

On other stretches of track in the sprawling system, workers can do similar equipment inspections and maintenance in the time gaps between trains, tucking themselves into concrete niches or between iron columns when a train approaches and emerging when it passes.

That’s not possible in Steinway. The two cast-iron tubes – Manhattan-bound and Queens-bound – are narrow. Very narrow. The only way to avoid getting struck by an approaching train is to scramble up a high bench wall along the tracks. It’s too dangerous and impractical to pull that off repeatedly with regular train traffic. “We can’t have people working in here at all when the trains are moving,” Prendergast said. “We can’t respond to make repairs.”

Eventually, says the MTA, they’ll have to shut down the 7 for another overnight to give the tube a thorough cleaning. It could need it.

As this story unfolded, it highlighted the never-ending quest to reach a state of good repair and why that’s an important goal to attempt to attain. When aging infrastructure reaches a certain point, it cannot withstand the daily beating it takes. That’s what happened to the Steinway Tube ten days ago, and it will likely happen again to this 110-year-old tunnel. Without the money for preventative maintenance, renovations happen only after an emergency. That seems to be the way of things underground these days.

A new report questions the MTA's current on-time performance metrics and suggests a passenger-based approach instead.

One of the biggest complaints New Yorkers have with the MTA and an oft-heard excuse early in the morning is one of the more mercurial aspects of transit operations. “Sorry I wasn’t on time,” we’ll often hear. “The B train was late this morning.” What exactly does that mean?

When I head from Brooklyn to Manhattan every day, I use the B train at 7th Ave., but I don’t really leave at the same time any day of the week. When I had two early classes last semester, I could time my trip to catch a B train at approximately the same time every morning, and when there was a problem, the train wouldn’t be there. To me, that’s the traditional definition of on time.

But there are other ways to measure on-time performance. One that the MTA uses internally is a wait assessment. Intuitively, this one makes some sense. If the B train is supposed to run every eight minutes, it matters less when the B trains arrives as it does when the next B train after that arrives. As long as the interval is eight minutes — or in the MTA’s case, eight minutes plus 25 percent — the trains are still on time, and people won’t be left with empty tracks when they expect a train.

Finally, we can judge a train based upon when it’s supposed to get to the end of the run. This is another metric Transit uses to judge on-time performance. If a train is at its terminal within five minutes of the scheduled time, it is still considered on time. Anything worse means delays or one sort of another along the route. But are these any good?

In a report released yesterday, the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA examined the authority’s wait assessment metrics and found them rigorous but lacking. The committee praised the MTA for being among the most transparent transit operators in the country in providing wait assessments but determined that the rankings did not help passengers evaluate on-time performance. The wait analyses, in other words, are geared toward internal evaluation and not improvements for the customers.

“A schedule is a promise,” PCAC Chair Ira Greenberg said. “A late train or bus breaks that promise and the impact is lost time for the riders. People depend on the MTA’s service for their livelihood. We want the MTA to think of the rider first, before trains and buses, and we look forward to working with them to achieve this.”

The report — which I’ve embedded below — presents an extensive evaluation of the MTA’s three rail divisions and a comparison with other U.S.-based transit providers. Passengers, it finds, are left in the dark, and ultimately, PCAC urges the MTA to develop a passenger on-time performance metric that can identify the number of passengers delayed and which ones are delayed most frequently.

Most vital is the report’s recommendation that the MTA start promoting capital expenditures as a way to improve on-time performance. PCAC highlights the countdown clocks as an example of a technology that can lead to more satisfied customers even if they don’t improve the wait times. “While countdown clocks do not create performance measurements,” the report says, “they serve to moderate the rider’s expectation of performance with real time knowledge.”

It takes a stronger stance on capital improvements viewed as disruptive by passengers. “The average rider doesn’t necessarily understand what new interlockings, switches and signals are, let alone appreciate how their improvement will enhance their commute. Historically, the use of performance metrics at the MTA began as an effort to secure needed capital funds. That linkage, as a tool to promote capital programs to the riding public and elected officials, has weakened over the years,” it says. “Specific information on how an item in the Capital Program will reduce the number of delayed and canceled trains, increase track speeds, and improve the ability to recover from a major service disruption is relevant to the riders.”

Now, that just makes sense. If the MTA can convince anyone that their work will make trains run on time, shouldn’t that be a prime selling point for a project? I would think so.

Keeping people moving and making sure they get somewhere on time should be a paramount goal for any transit provider. While wait measurements and delay assessments are more important for commuter rail riders who see transit only every 30 minutes at peak times instead of every five, subway riders like to know they’ll get to their jobs and appointments on time without egregiously long waits. By presenting that information to the public in an easy-to-understand fashion that directly addresses the wait, the MTA could improve the way customers impatiently wait for trains. Time might be on my side after all.

After the jump, read the PCAC’s full report. Read More→