Waiting for a subway to show up underground can be a very fleeting experience. The lucky among us arrive on the platform just as the train arrives. The unlucky may have to wait ten or fifteen minutes at the worst of times. Still, subway platforms are among the dirtiest parts of the city, and with Transit planning a reduction in the number of cleaners, they won’t look much better any time soon.
But what of the train cars themselves? We spend far more time riding the cars. We sit on them; we stand on them; we doze off on them; and some among us even cut their nails or eat on them. Clean subway cars then should be a goal shared by all, and yet, I see people leave trash on a train that they probably wouldn’t just drop on their living room floors.
Today, the Straphangers Campaign has unveiled its annual Shmutz Survey. Every year, the rider advocacy organization surveys our subway lines to find out just how clean — or how dirty — the cars really are. Their release has the details:
Campaign surveyors rated 57% of subway cars as “clean” in a survey conducted in the fall and winter of 2008, which was a statistical improvement from 50% of cars rated clean in a survey conducted in the winter of 2007.
The best performing line in our survey was the 7 in the second half of 2008, with 84% of its cars rated clean, up from 78% in 2007. The worst performing line in our survey was the R, with the smallest number of clean cars at 25%.
Beginning on December 10, 2007, a new “line general manager” – Lou Brusati – was appointed with greater authority to run the 7. However, another line with a line general manager – the L – had fewer clean cars, declining from 88% in our 2007 survey to 62% in the current survey. Both lines originally had additional cleaning resources.
Unfortunately for the city’s subway riders, this year’s increased cleanliness may be a high-water mark. The MTA plans to reduce its car-cleaning staff by around four percent, according to the Straphangers. In 2009, the agency employed 1181 cleaners with 155 supervisors but next year will have just 1138 cleaners and 146 supervisors. “It is encouraging to find an increase in clean cars,” Gene Russianoff, Straphangers attorney, said. “But we are very concerned that cuts in cleaners will result in dirtier cars.”
The biggest piece of news to come out of this report is its disparity with regards to the MTA’s cleanliness ratings. As Michael Grynbaum notes in the City Room piece on the survey, the MTA’s internal survey pronounced 91 percent of the cars clean. The Straphangers release their methodology (here as a PDF) while the MTA does not.
In the end, it is what it is. While we want to see the MTA maintain its cleaning staff, cleanliness underground begins and ends with the riders. If people abuse the system, if they drop trash on the ground and spill drinks on the cars, everyone suffers.
After the jump, some bullet-point findings from the Straphangers. You can find the table of clean cars per line here as a PDF and one chart showing the year-to-year comparison here as a PDF.
Key Findings
- The most deteriorated line in our survey was the N, which fell from 63% in 2007 to 29% in 2008.
- The most improved line in our survey was the J, going from 33% clean cars in 2007 to 78% in 2008. The J line is now the third best performing line in the 2008 survey.
- MTA New York City Transit conducts its own semi-annual subway car cleanliness survey, which does not report its results on a line-by-line basis.
- Transit’s survey also showed improvement in subway car overall cleanliness for the second half of 2008. The number of clean car floors and seats (those with no or light dirt) “measured throughout the day while in service” improved from 87% in the second half of 2007 to 91% in the second half of 2008.
- The average percentage of clean cars in the Campaign’s 2008 survey was 57% compared to New York City Transit’s 91%. The car cleanliness surveys by Transit and the Straphangers Campaign surveys use similar although not-identical methodology. For example, we rate throughout the day and night and on weekends. New York City Transit rates on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. We acknowledge that we have very different findings, but the Campaign is not able to point to factors that come to this result. However, both surveys show improvement.
Recommendations
- Closely monitor the impact of reductions in resources to cleaning subway cars, as well as to station and track cleaning.
- Produce more detailed and timely information on cleanliness. The MTA does not publish the results of its cleanliness ratings by line, even though it maintains such information internally. To its credit, Transit is publishing car cleanliness numbers for the L and 7 lines combined.
- Expand the use of ‘hand-held’ computers in their own survey to provide more timely information. New York City Transit has been piloting the use of hand-held computers and plans to expand in the next two years.
- Post the results of its surveys where riders can see them. The campaign praised the MTA for providing several system-wide performance measures on its website, such as regularity of service, and urged the MTA to add the results of its line-by-line cleanliness surveys to its web site, www.mta.info.