I’ve had a busy few days at the good ol’, bill-payin’ day job. So I had no chance to draw your attention to a lovely story yesterday morning in the New York Post proclaiming subway delays up 44 percent. Now, on the one hand, that’s a shocking number, but on the other hand, as anyone who ever rides the subways on a regular basis could tell you, this is about as big a “duh” story as one could find these days.
According to this nifty graphic, track work — with 4,117 citations — is the leading cause of train delays, and that number has nearly doubled from 2007’s 2,093 delays. While people holding doors — the number two cause — will always be a subway scourge, this news reflects nothing but the latest facts about the MTA. As budgets sag, construction projects get held up and that elusive state of good repair slips away.
The story in the Post doesn’t get into the why of construction-related delays. It similar features some rote comments from MTA officials unhappy with their numbers and unhappy with what Board member Mark Lebow termed a “lack of supervision of what goes on underground.” Outrageous as these numbers might be, breaking news it ain’t.
3 comments
The delays due to track work are not construction related delays. These are delays due to routine maintainance and the protections in place to protect those workers doing this maintainence under train traffic (notebally, slowing trains down while people are on the tracks)
Construction is done WITHOUT trains running
In that case, that’s even less of a reason to complain. The MTA is being cautious for the sake of their workers’ safety. We should not be complaining then.
I wonder if people would even care if a few more track workers a year were getting maimed or killed by trains. To a lot the yuppie class these people are inferior and disposable anyway so they can get to work five minutes earlier.