DC Metro on time less often than NYCT

When it comes to subways, the concept of “on time” is a rather amorphous one. Most New Yorkers would consider the subway to be on a time if a train were pulling into a station and getting ready to open its doors right as we were making our way down (or up) the staircase to the platform. In reality — pesky thing that — the folks who run subways have a stricter definition of “on time” that even involves some schedules, and according to recent reports, New York is faring pretty well with that “on time” thing.

The recent report to which I am referring is one that comes from Washington, D.C. The Metro, according to WTOP News, is suffering from a performance gap. More trains are arriving off schedule. Adam Tuss has more:

On the rails, Metro has set a goal of 95 percent when it comes to on-time peak service during the morning and afternoon rush periods. The actual on-time performance statistics during November, the latest month Metro crunched its numbers, show 85 percent of trains were on-time for a.m. service, a full 10 percentage points off. Even lower at 83 percent was p.m. service.

By itself, that’s not a very impressive figure. When we start to compare it to New York, it looks even worse. According to the most recent NYCT performance indicators, the numbers for 2007 were down compared to 2006, but trains were still running on time — that is, within five minutes of their scheduled times — 93 percent of the time for the first eight months of 2007.

So there, Washington! Take that.

Now, I’m sure some of you are wondering why I’m making such a big deal about this. Just this week I finished Zachary Schrag’s The Great Society Subway, an excellent history of the D.C. Metro. In it, Schrag highlights on more than one occasion the fact that the Metro’s planners didn’t want the system to be like New York’s; rather, they wanted to be better than New York’s.

I’ll give the book a proper review next week, but after reading how D.C. officials, who lord over what I consider to be a very nice-looking subway that offers mediocre service, consider their system far superior to New York’s, it’s comforting to get concrete information that Washington’s system isn’t as good as New York. For all our complaints about service, the MTA is better at being “on time,” whatever that means.