Please Suppress Gag-Reflex While Riding: The New York City Subway in Pictures

In the Showcase City of the World's Wealthiest Country, An Underground Slum Makes the Case, to Thousands of Residents and Tourists Every Day, for U.S. Technological Decline and Civic Decay
by Oliver; 2015
             

Rant

Good day or bad—good night or bad—in New York, my last impression of this city before getting home is usually, "God, this place is such a shithole!" That's because my way home often involves the subway. So whenever somebody tells me how great New York is, or I hear the phrase "American Exceptionalism," I'll always feel a twinge as I weigh those words against the crusty, dysfunctional slum below the city. The embarrassingly filthy MTA puts a hard, low ceiling on the quality of life in New York City and ensures it will never rise to basic pleasantness—unless you're rich enough to opt out of the subway by getting a personal car.

The one thing transportation systems are supposed to be engineered for, predictable reliability, is the one thing the MTA is not. As you wait for your train on a slummy, trash-strewn platform, questions swirl through your head: "Where is my train? What random-ass, unpublicized service changes or stoppages are going to torpedo my travel plans?" And, most distressingly, "Can our society possibly care this little about public transportation?" Everybody who is doing the right thing by not contributing to car pollution and traffic gets a big, hairy "Fuck You." So don your virtual bubble boy prophylactic suit—without further ado, here is the New York City subway in pictures.

Décor

Still life with feces and plastic bag, 168^th St.


Crumbling ceiling, Times Square.


Tableau, 125^th St.

High Tech

A subway car built by the long defunct Pullman-Standard Company and refurbished in 1991.


A bucket jury-rigged as a speaker? 34^th St.


A sign smithed in a Middle Earth forge.

(Image credit: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews via NYC Subways Slowly Upgrading From 1930s-Era Technology)

The caption from NYC Subways Slowly Upgrading From 1930s-Era Technology explains, "In this Dec. 16, 2014 photo, lights on a section of the MTA subway interlocking switch and signal control board shows train locations, at the 4th Street MTA Supervisory Tower in New York."

(Image credit: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews via NYC Subways Slowly Upgrading From 1930s-Era Technology)

The captions from NYC Subways Slowly Upgrading From 1930s-Era Technology note, "This Dec. 16, 2014 photo shows manual levers on a section of the MTA subway interlocking switch and signal control board, in New York... The 1930s technology of switches and relays requires a human operator to use hand levers to manually route trains and keep them separated at safe distances."

Here's a YouTube video about the MTA's ancient technology:

(Video credit: YouTube: CBTC: Communications-Based Train Control)

Cleanliness

A familiar sight—trash on the tracks half submerged in fetid water, 42^nd St.


Table for two, 168^th St.

Fauna

Heaven for birders.


Nuclear winter, 145^th St.


Rats are everywhere—on the tracks, on the platforms, and, in this classic YouTube video, on the subway cars themselves:

(Video credit: YouTube: RAT on the New York subway!)

Artisanal Signage

Constancy

L train fail, 14^th St.


Above all, making it home on the subway requires one thing: luck.

Passengers

Press Kit

• How 2 M.T.A. Decisions Pushed the Subway Into Crisis

By now, New York City commuters are familiar with the wait. We descend from the bitter cold or the stifling heat to find subway platforms teeming with other bodies trying to make it to work on time. Delays ripple through the system, so there’s barely room to squeeze into the next train that arrives.

• The Case for the Subway

Most countries treat subway systems as national assets. They understand that their cities are their great wealth creators and equality enablers and that cities don’t work without subways. The public-private corporation that runs Hong Kong’s subway expects 99.9 percent of its trains to run on time, and they do. (If you are traveling to the airport, you can also check your luggage at a central downtown train station and not see it again until you’ve landed at your destination. Imagine!) China has been feverishly building new metro systems in cities across the country, a recognition that subways are the only way to keep pace with the nation’s rapid urbanization and the needs of its citizens. And it’s not just new cities that are seeing major investments in their subways. Two decades ago, the decline of London’s Underground became a national crisis; now it’s moving toward running driverless trains ...

New York City’s subway, meanwhile, is falling apart. If you are a regular rider, you know this firsthand. But even if you aren’t, it has probably become difficult to ignore all the stories about the system’s failure: the F train that was trapped between stations for close to an hour without power or air conditioning, the Q train that derailed in Brooklyn, the track fire on the A line in Harlem that sent nine passengers to the hospital.

Average train speeds are now slower than they were in 1950.

Most of the system’s 472 stations need some kind of major repair or wholesale renovation. Elevators need to be added — fewer than one in five stations are even partially accessible to people with physical disabilities. Cracked tiles and rusty columns need to be replaced. Stairwells and entryways need to be enlarged, flood-prone openings need to be waterproofed, ventilation plants need to be rebuilt. All the platforms need to be sealed off from the tracks with automatic sliding doors to prevent passengers from throwing trash on the rail bed and block them from falling, jumping or being pushed under a train. Sharp turns in tunnels throughout the system need to be reconstructed so that they are less severe, allowing for higher speeds and thus more trains ... The roadbed beneath much of the track needs to be chipped out and replaced with fresh concrete and new drains. About 3,000 of the system’s 6,400 cars date to the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. About half of those need to be rebuilt with modern motors, wheels and brakes, as well as open gangways between the cars to increase capacity. The other half need to be replaced altogether.

What’s miraculous at this point is that [the subway] still works at all. The fact that it does, that even after decades of neglect it is still somehow managing to carry New York’s economy on its back, may be the best argument for giving it everything it needs, and then a whole lot more.

And what is the alternative?

Here’s one possible scenario: New York won’t die, but it will become a different place. It will happen slowly, almost imperceptibly, for years, obscured by the prosperity of the segment of the population that can consistently avoid mass transit. But gradually, an unpleasant and unreliable subway will have a cascading effect on New Yorkers’ relationship with their city. Increasingly, we will retreat; the infinite possibilities of New York will shrink as the distances between neighborhoods seem to grow. In time, businesses will choose to move elsewhere, to cities where public transit is better and housing is cheaper. This will depress real estate values, which will make housing more affordable in the short term. But it will also slow growth and development, which will curtail job prospects and deplete New York’s tax base, limiting its ability to provide for citizens who rely on its public institutions for opportunity. The gap between rich and poor will widen. As the city’s density dissipates, so too will its economic energy. Innovation will happen elsewhere. New York City will be just some city.

• The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth: How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York

The leaders entrusted to expand New York’s regional transit network have paid the highest construction costs in the world, spending billions of dollars that could have been used to fix existing subway tunnels, tracks, trains and signals.

The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively.

The spending has taken place even as the M.T.A. has cut back on core subway maintenance because, as The New York Times has documented, generations of politicians have diverted money from the transit authority and saddled it with debt ...

For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits.

The vendors that worked on the East Side Access, Second Avenue subway and No. 7 line projects have given a combined $5 million to New York politicians since the projects began in 2000, a Times analysis found.

More than a dozen M.T.A. workers were fined for accepting gifts from contractors during that time, records show. One was Anil Parikh, the director of the Second Avenue subway project. He got a $2,500 ticket to a gala, a round of golf and dinner from a contractor in 2002. Years later, shortly after the line opened, he went to work for the contractor’s parent company, AECOM. Mr. Parikh and AECOM declined to comment.

A Times analysis of the 25 M.T.A. agency presidents who have left over the past two decades found that at least 18 of them became consultants or went to work for authority contractors, including many who have worked on expansion projects.

• NYT Opinion: New York Leaders Are Failing Its Subway Riders

The latest dismaying detail comes from a report by Brian Rosenthal in The Times, which concludes that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway system, spends far more to build tunnels and extend train lines than agencies doing comparable projects elsewhere. Its construction projects have more workers than those in other cities, and workers are kept on hand even when there is no need for them. Contractors add a premium to their bids, claiming it compensates them for dealing with the M.T.A.’s bureaucracy. And some unions and contractors negotiate wages and work rules without any say from the authority.

Billions of dollars that could have gone to maintaining and improving the subways, which use a signaling system that dates to the 1930s, have been wasted on exorbitant costs. Projects have also been delayed by mismanagement.

Blame for these costs belongs to politically powerful construction companies and labor unions that drive up costs under the lax oversight of public officials who have no incentive to rouse sleeping legislative watchdogs.

Consider the following: The first phase of the Second Avenue subway, completed at the end of 2016, cost $2.5 billion per mile; and the extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards, finished the year before, cost $1.5 billion per mile. By contrast, Paris, a dense and historic city with strong labor unions, is building a line extension similar to the Second Avenue project for just $450 million a mile, which is roughly comparable to the average cost for subway projects around the world. Several transit experts have pointed out these cost discrepancies in recent years.

• How Cuts in Basic Subway Upkeep Can Make Your Commute Miserable
• How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways

After a drumbeat of transit disasters this year, it became impossible to ignore the failures of the New York City subway system.

A rush-hour Q train careened off the rails in southern Brooklyn. A track fire on the A line in Upper Manhattan sent nine riders to the hospital. A crowded F train stalled in a downtown tunnel, leaving hundreds in the dark without air-conditioning for nearly an hour. As the heat of packed-together bodies fogged the windows, passengers beat on the walls and clawed at the doors in a scene from a real-life horror story.

In June, after another derailment injured 34 people, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared that the system was in a “state of emergency.”

But the problems plaguing the subway did not suddenly sweep over the city like a tornado or a flood. They were years in the making, and they might have been avoided if decision makers had put the interests of train riders and daily operations ahead of flashy projects and financial gimmicks.

An examination by The New York Times reveals in stark terms how the needs of the aging, overburdened system have grown while city and state politicians have consistently steered money away from addressing them.

Century-old tunnels and track routes are crumbling, but The Times found that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s budget for subway maintenance has barely changed, when adjusted for inflation, from what it was 25 years ago.

Signal problems and car equipment failures occur twice as frequently as a decade ago, but hundreds of mechanic positions have been cut because there is not enough money to pay them — even though the average total compensation for subway managers has grown to nearly $300,000 a year.

Daily ridership has nearly doubled in the past two decades to 5.7 million, but New York is the only major city in the world with fewer miles of track than it had during World War II. Efforts to add new lines have been hampered by generous agreements with labor unions and private contractors that have inflated construction costs to five times the international average.

New York’s subway now has the worst on-time performance of any major rapid transit system in the world, according to data collected from the 20 biggest. Just 65 percent of weekday trains reach their destinations on time, the lowest rate since the transit crisis of the 1970s, when graffiti-covered cars regularly broke down.

• Four Lessons From Our Year of Subway Hell

“De Blasio loves driving and drivers even more than we thought,” says Jon Orcutt, director of communications and advocacy at TransitCenter. Indeed, de Blasio has come out against congestion pricing, misleadingly calling it a regressive tax. Instead, he has proposed a so-called millionaires tax to raise funds for the MTA. Like congestion pricing, such a tax would have to be approved by Albany, and it lacks the support of the governor ...

“In 2017, we see that vehicles [and] drivers still seem to come first when push comes to shove,” says Caroline Samponaro, deputy director of Transportation Alternatives. “I think we’ve learned more and more as we’ve worked on Vision Zero that it’s a basic equity issue: We’re still planning streets predominantly for drivers, yet a majority of New Yorkers don’t drive and never will.”

• The Most Awful Transit Center in America Could Get Unimaginably Worse

All who schlep through [New York’s Penn Station] are united by a powerful urge to leave. “Everybody just wants to get the hell out of there,” says Mitchell Moss, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.

Every late train bleeds the economy: Executives miss board meetings, tourists don’t spend, hourly workers get a smaller paycheck.

As the gateway to America’s largest city, Penn Station should inspire awe, as train stations do in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other competently managed metropolises. Instead, it embodies a particular kind of American failure—the inability to maintain roads, rails, ports, and other necessary conduits. For generations, the officials connected to Penn Station have been blind to, or unable to deliver on, the idea that improving the station would more than pay for itself. (One estimate, from the Business Roundtable, says that a dollar invested in infrastructure yields as much as $3 in economic growth.) In the final days of 2017, the situation reached perhaps its bleakest point yet, when the Trump administration signaled its disinterest in coming to the rescue: The president will not honor an Obama-era commitment to New York and New Jersey to foot half the cost of a new tunnel, dumping planners back at square one.

Penn Station is a debacle reaching across time. Its past is a slow-motion disaster of inaction and canceled reforms, its present an ongoing disgrace. And its future could be truly catastrophic, in the form of a tunnel failure that pinches shut one of the most vital economic arteries in America.

• My Subway Commute This Morning Sucked, How Was Yours?

"Due to a stalled train, this train will be running on the Sixth Avenue line," the conductor screamed through the loudspeaker. The man next to me groaned ... And so, the Q, which was now a D, crawled on...but somewhere along the journey to West 4th Street, a real D train got stuck, and my train had to reinvent itself again. This time, she was reborn as an F, and we made local stops aaaaaaalllllll theeeee waaaaay uuuuuuuuptooooown. I wasn't sure where the train would spit me out, and neither were my fellow commuters. At some point, the conductor cheerfully announced the next stop was 57th Street. "But which 57th Street?" one woman asked. No one knew. (It was 6th Avenue)

This is getting ridiculous. The city's lifeblood is its subway system, and if rents keep pushing people farther out in the boroughs, trucks block bike lanes, and buses crawl through traffic, we're going to need better rapid transit. Plus, my doctor told me the other day that my blood pressure is "dangerously high," and if I have a stroke on the subway because my Q train decided to become an R and then an F and then an A, my mom is going to be REALLY MAD.

• The Subway That Warps Space and Time

Imagine getting to work every day with a map that changed every time you looked at it.

New York City subway service isn’t consistently bad. It isn’t consistently anything. It mixes days of normalcy with surprise disasters whose disruptive effect is something like an air-raid drill, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded underground, while their kids wait at schools, their office chairs sit empty, and their shifts begin. If, as former New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere once put it, transportation is “the game board upon which the economy is played,” New York City is the demented spinoff of Settlers of Catan. The board changes every day, with a debilitating effect on businesses, birthday parties, and everything in between.

But the governor underestimates the extent to which weekly meltdowns are adding up to something that threatens the vitality of the subway, and with it, the city’s desirability as a place to live and do business.

It’s the unpredictability of service—and the MTA’s stubborn reluctance to convey what is actually happening, so that one might make other plans—that drives people crazy. And after it drives them crazy, it drives them to Los Angeles.

Last Monday, the MTA announced a six-point plan to address delays ... It does not account for the subway’s two biggest problems: its ancient signal system and its insanely high construction costs. Those two things are interrelated and together account for virtually every other problem with the subway. Signals break, hinder the deployment of countdown clocks and driverless trains, and prevent trains from running closer together. High costs impede the development of 20th-century signal technology and other capital improvements ...

• NYC Subway Delays: Signal Problems Stall A/C Trains In Brooklyn

A and C line commuters were stuck on trains for hours Wednesday morning due to "multiple ongoing signal problems" affecting the lines, the MTA announced.

• In Deepest Cold, a Subway Car Becomes the Shelter of Last Resort

There are an estimated 3,900 unsheltered homeless people living around New York City, according to the latest figures from 2017 ... But during extremely cold weather, more than usual descend into the subway, open and heated 24 hours a day, and transform its trains into rolling shelters.

• Worst subway service disruptions in recent MTA history
• Subway rider wakes up to man peeing on her face
• MTA WTF: A visual timeline of the subway’s epic 2017 meltdown
• Some subways are literally held together with zip ties
• Subway derailment causes chaotic morning commute

Two subway cars of an A train derailed Tuesday morning at the 125th Street station in Harlem, causing dozens of injuries, officials said.

The train derailed about 9:50 a.m. As many as 34 people were hurt, with six transported to nearby hospitals, officials said.

• MTA warns subway riders after another stalled-train escape

Exasperated customers taking matters into their own hands and jumping out of subway trains to walk on the tracks is becoming a trend.

On Tuesday morning, two men who got tired of sitting in a stalled F train got out and walked to the 34th Street station. One of those men told The Post that he did it so he wouldn’t be late to his new job.

Delays in the subway system have become chronic in the past few months, with riders often unsure if they’ll make it to work or home on time.

• Failing Subway Threatens New York’s Financial Future, M.T.A. Chief Says

The leader of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged on Monday that the failing health of New York City’s subway system imperils not only the city’s financial future, but the well-being of the surrounding region.

• Straphangers jump from stalled subway to avoid hellish commute
• This nightmare commute on New York’s F Train sounds an awful lot like Metro

The latest subway debacle from New York will seem all too familiar to Metro riders.

A Monday evening commuting delay turned into a harrowing experience for hundreds of riders on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who were trapped inside an F Train that stalled in a tunnel near Broadway-Lafayette station.

What’s worse, the train’s air-conditioning system was broken. On some of the cars, the power cut off and the lights went dark. And as time dragged on and the train failed to move, passengers stuck on the packed, sweltering train began to panic.

One rider recounted the experience in a Facebook post Monday night.

“As we waited with no further communication, people started getting very worried,” wrote the passenger, Michael Sciaraffo. “Almost everyone began fanning themselves with paper, as it felt as if it was just getting warmer and warmer. Beads of sweat began rolling down people’s faces. We started to tell everyone to open the side windows and open the doors the three inches we could pry it open to, with books, to get the cross ventilation from the passing trains.”

MTA officials are investigating the response to the Monday night train breakdown, ABC7 reported. It’s the latest in a series of incidents and commuting meltdowns that have raised serious concerns about the state of the infrastructure on America’s busiest subway system.

• Why Is Subway Service in New York Getting Worse?
• ‘Money Out of Your Pocket’: New Yorkers Tell of Subway Delay Woes

It was 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday during the height of the morning rush on the nation’s busiest subway. Suddenly, power went out at one station in Brooklyn, but that lone failure triggered a meltdown that crippled service across New York City, stranding countless commuters whose plans for the day were derailed.

One woman never made it to housing court and now faces eviction. Another missed a doctor appointment made months earlier. A graphic designer lost $100 in wages. A computer technician paid more than $50 for an Uber car to make a meeting. A lawyer was late for a sentencing. A pastry chef who needs every hour of work he can scrounge lost an hour and a half of pay. A psychoanalyst never made it to her session with a patient. Neither did her patient.

These are the very real human costs, financial and otherwise, of a single subway disruption — just one painful delay in what has become a season of transit misery. On this day, like so many others, New Yorkers missed job interviews, medical appointments and other basic responsibilities of daily life. They waited endlessly on platforms for trains that never came. They crammed into overstuffed buses. They emailed apologies to bosses and clients.

For many riders, the subway is failing at its fundamental task — getting people where they need to be when they need to be there.

• Tired of New York’s Subways? Blame Andrew Cuomo

New Yorkers have recently been treated to repeated subway meltdowns. This month, two power failures in Brooklyn caused delays and reroutings on seven lines. On April 24, a signal failure and track fire led to significant delays. And three days before that, a power failure in Midtown Manhattan led to a near systemwide breakdown.

These wholesale disasters come on top of all the minor breakdowns and delays that characterize a typical rush hour in New York these days. And each time these failures occur, we leave hundreds of thousands of riders stuck underground, sometimes for hours. The economic costs of these delays are enormous. But the human cost of missing work or school, or being late to pick up your kids from day care, or canceling appointments, is just as important.

Yet the governor has been conspicuously absent as riders vent their frustrations about our subway system. And when the M.T.A. finally announced a plan this week to tackle subway delays, Governor Cuomo was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the agency’s acting executive director talked about a $20 million investment to try to address the problem — a far cry from the billions of dollars the governor has promised the agency and so far failed to deliver.

As a state agency, the M.T.A. is ultimately run by Governor Cuomo — yet rather than face its challenges, he has instead taken up other priorities: rebuilding the Tappan Zee Bridge, redesigning La Guardia Airport, revamping Penn Station. In short, he has done an excellent job funding projects to help people flee New York City, but has been content to keep an arm’s length from a crumbling subway system that carries 1.7 billion passengers a year.

One reason is obvious: Governor Cuomo can use the M.T.A. as a shield from criticism from commuters, who blame the agency for their commuting woes instead of pointing the finger at the man behind the curtain. This misdirection gives the governor cover to raid tens of millions of dedicated transit dollars to fund other projects, spend two years refusing to fund the M.T.A.’s ambitious 2015-19 capital plan to invest in subway and bus infrastructure and — just a few months ago — wipe $65 million a year from our subways and buses with the stroke of a pen. The consequences of years of disinvestment have been severe: Riders now have to contend with more than 70,000 delays a month (well over a delay every minute) and record levels of overcrowding on trains.

The other reason for Mr. Cuomo’s avoidance is that fixing mass transit is difficult. It’s expensive, it’s complicated and the benefits often don’t accrue until long after the elected officials who funded them have moved on. Many a politician takes a hard look at public transit and decides to find an easier fight.

But right now, New Yorkers don’t need a politician. We need a leader like those who had the foresight to build this sprawling, messy, utterly essential system and sustain it for over a century. If we want to keep public transit running for another century, Governor Cuomo must make necessary investments now. As a first step, he should give the M.T.A. the full $8.3 billion he has promised for its capital program, rather than make it wait years and borrow billions of dollars more.

Governor Cuomo can think big when building bridges or airports. He should apply the same grand vision to our vital public transit system. Installing modern signals should take years, not decades — the current plan stretches beyond 2050 to implement 20th-century technology. He should replace all cars that are past their useful life; some of today’s trains date to the 1960s. He should make buses an attractive alternative for riders, as they are in London or Seoul, by investing in inexpensive improvements like all-door boarding and traffic light priority. And most important, he should announce an influx of state funding above and beyond the M.T.A.’s existing capital budget to pay for these necessary improvements, instead of making riders shoulder the cost through ever-increasing fares.

Over a year ago, my organization, the Riders Alliance, collected hundreds of “subway horror stories” from riders. Sadly, since that time, the problem has grown only worse.

• New York City’s Subway System Violates Local and Federal Laws, Disability Groups Say
• Subway’s Slide in Performance Leaves Straphangers Fuming

Subway delays have jumped to more than 70,000 each month, from about 28,000 per month in 2012, according to the data. On some lines, trains arrive late to their final destination well over half the time.

Adding to the misery is worsening mechanical performance — a troubling sign that the train fleet is not being adequately replaced or maintained and a problem that has contributed to the spike in delays. The average distance that subway cars travel between breakdowns was about 120,000 miles in November, down from 200,000 in November 2010.

The decline in service is frustrating many passengers as they stew on stalled trains, pressing uncomfortably close to other riders and worrying about being late to work. When an overstuffed train arrives, commuters must decide whether to squeeze aboard or wait for another, however long that takes.

Subway riders have unleashed a torrent of complaints on social media, venting that poor service is becoming the norm. With increasingly regularity, it seems, the transit agency has been issuing sigh-inducing alerts on Twitter: a police investigation on the D line; a sick passenger at Grand Central Station; elevator repairs leading to unsafe crowds on the No. 1 line.

Erin Buckley was caught in one of the delays this month when her F train stopped abruptly in Manhattan. A mechanical problem left her stuck on board for more than half an hour. “The last few months have been maddening,” said Ms. Buckley, 27, who lives in Brooklyn.

New York’s century-old subway is straining to handle nearly six million passengers each day — its greatest ridership since the 1940s and up from about four million in the 1990s. More than a third of subway delays are caused by overcrowding, which accounted for nearly 30,000 delays in November. As passengers jostle to get on and off, trains must sit longer in stations, leading to a cascade of delays along a line.

• Subway Ridership Declines in New York. Is Uber to Blame?

Subway delays have more than doubled in the past five years, and trains are more frequently breaking down.

As riders fume over worsening service, on Thursday several members of the transportation authority board criticized Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who effectively controls the agency, for cutting $65 million in state aid to the M.T.A. in his executive budget.

• NYC Subways Slowly Upgrading From 1930s-Era Technology

New York City's subways—the nation's biggest mass transit network—serve more than 6 million daily riders who depend largely on a signal system that dates back to the Great Depression.

Antiquated electro-mechanics with thousands of moving parts are still critical to operations. Dispatchers still monitor most trains from 24-hour underground "towers," and they still put pencil to paper to track their progress.

That eight-decade-old system is slowly being replaced by 21st-century digital technology that allows up to twice as many trains to safely travel closer together. But there's a big caveat: It could take at least 20 years for the city's 700 miles of tracks to be fully computerized.

Of the subway system's almost two dozen major lines, just one, the L linking Manhattan and Brooklyn, currently operates on new, computerized, automated signals. And the modernization of the No. 7 line from Manhattan to Queens has begun, to be completed by 2017.

So, for at least the foreseeable future, New York subway riders can expect the snags, weekend shutdowns and overcrowding they have become accustomed to.

• Audit: New York City Subway Tracks Filthy, Overrun With Rats

An audit by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has revealed that subway tracks are filled with rats, dirt and garbage...

“We got a gin bottle. We got a 7-Up bottle. We got an orange juice bottle. We got an old sneaker. It’s all laying in muck and mud-sewage water and rats are running like crazy,” Ozone Park resident Michael O’Shaughnessey said...

Riders are calling for change.

“It’s disgusting. That’s just nasty,” subway rider Irene Sumpter said, pointing to the garbage-strewn tracks at the East Broadway station along the “F” line. “We could have a beautiful subway system if somebody would just put in some hard work.”

• Phone service finally penetrates New York Subway

Some well traveled New Yorkers expressed amazement that the city was only now taking first steps toward spreading high-tech communications below street level.

"I come from Germany and there it's very advanced. I'm not surprised, because the United States is very far from being an innovator anymore. That was last century," architect Thomas Winter, 47, said.

"Just look at the subway," he added, gesturing at the dank, dirty tunnel on the L line. "When it rains, it drips through the ceiling."

Note: Most stations and subway cars are, in fact, still without phone service.


• New Yorkers To Mayor De Blasio: 'Get Used To It'

Big city mayors love to ride subways, after they're elected. Their iron-clad official automobiles may be comfortable, efficient, and wi-fi'd, but a politician who rides the subway now and then is better optics...

This week, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York decided to take the A train from lower Manhattan to a midtown tech conference near Penn Station. The mayor left himself 15 minutes, which is shaving his New York seconds pretty close.

But the A train was delayed; track problems, transit officials said later. The mayor simmered on the platform, encircled by his police guards. He trudged upstairs to try to get back into his security vehicle; but his driver had left to pick him up at the tech conference.

His car turned around to fetch him, and once the mayor was back on plush cushions he sent an email to his chief of staff and the head of his police detail.

"We waited 20 mins for an express only to hear there were major delays," the mayor thumbed. "We need a better system."

• Someone Tied a Used Condom to the F Train

Witnessing disgusting behavior on the subway is just part of living in New York. You get used to it! It's a rite of passage! But nothing you've seen before could have prepared you for this one.

• You Are Not Insane, The New York City Subway Is Getting Worse

It's not all in your head. You aren't going crazy. Each day, as you stand there desperately clinging to a greasy pole, just trying to get to work, and you encounter yet another delay, you can tell yourself that it really is happening. The New York City subway is getting worse. The numbers prove it.

By one of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's measures, the total number of delays in 2014 increased an astonishing 45.6 percent over 2013. Even the MTA's less drastic numbers still point to slower service. More is at work here than meandering crowds of uncivilized cretins sullying the sacred shrine to transportation the the New York City subway once was. But the agency has no clear institutional explanation for the decline...

It's hard to directly compare New York's performance with that of other cities, many of which evaluate themselves using different metrics. The New York subway system is more than a century old, built out of multiple competing lines, and its passenger load and round-the-clock service create a singular set of stresses. When MTA chief Jay Walder left New York for Hong Kong's MTR system three years ago, he was jumping to a modern system that boasts a 99.9 percent on-time rate.

• Fixing all the problems at MTA subway stations will take 52 YEARS, says report

It'll take more than half a century for the MTA to fix all the problems with its 468 subway stations, according to a report released Wednesday.

At the current pace of repairing 280 station components — such as staircases, ceilings, platforms or pillars — every year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can finally relax in the year 2067.

That’s according to a new report by the Citizens Budget Commission, which compares the MTA’s task to Greek mythological figure Sisyphus, who is condemned by the gods to forever push a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back.

“The reason the task is so Sisyphean is you not only have a backlog of repairs from the bad old days of the 1980s . . . but you’ve also got extremely heavy use of the system,” said Jamison Dague, the report’s author.

The worst station is the 52nd St. stop on the 7 line in Woodside, Queens, with 79% of its 29 structural parts in bad condition.

• Ancient subway trains on C and J/Z lines won't be replaced until 2022, documents say

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expecting its order of state-of-the-art trains to be delayed, meaning ancient train cars now on the C and J/Z lines will stick around until 2022, according to budget documents and transit officials.

The old trains — a model called R32, which were considered cutting edge at the 1964 World’s Fair — are unable to leave life on the rails by 2018 as planned, costing the agency $50.2 million over the next four years in maintenance and extra train staff, according to the budget docs.

• Despite woeful service, MTA fare hikes take effect to cover raises

Today, for the fifth time in eight years, the MTA has hiked subway and bus fares: A monthly pass is now $116.50, up from $112, and single rides are up a quarter to $2.75.

Meanwhile, the subways are worse than ever.

Over the past month especially, not a day goes by without serious delays, cancellations and overcrowded subway cars and platforms. It has become impossible to predict the length and route of one’s commute. This Monday and Tuesday, the L train — already stretched to the max by its never-ending population explosion — stopped running during the morning rush.

Know how many subway lines aren’t running their regular routes this weekend? Just the 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, C, E, N, Q, F, D and S. The L is running this weekend — unlike the past six or so weekends — but there are service changes on weeknights.

• Why Flashy Plans for LaGuardia Don't Impress Transit Advocates

The “slow, dated” and “almost universally derided” La Guardia of today, proclaimed Cuomo, is “un-New York.”

As soon as the press conference ended, the city’s transit advocates started finding fault with the governor’s priorities. “If an airport that’s slow and dated and universally derided is considered un-New York,” asked Ben Kabak at the blog Second Avenue Sagas, “what exactly does that make the subway system and remainder of the transit network that millions use on a daily basis to navigate around the city?”

Ben Fried at Streetsblog asked the same question, adding, “New York’s failure to impress tourists who fly Delta is a problem Cuomo wants to personally address. New York’s crushing traffic congestion, unpredictable subways, miserably crowded platforms, and slow buses are just part of the city’s charm” ...

Here’s how Kabak put it at Second Avenue Sagas:

In terms of bang for your buck, an overhaul of the Port Authority Bus Terminal or a real plan to rebuild Penn Station and start moving on trans-Hudson tunnels would affect far more daily travelers than a rebuild of LaGuardia airport, and the dollars would be comparable. But Cuomo doesn’t talk about these proposals because he doesn’t take buses or trains; he flies and he drives...

Meanwhile, day in and day out, 8 million New Yorkers and the millions more suburbanites who commute to the city daily face packed platforms, a steady drumbeat of fare hikes, and service that is increasingly unreliable—with subway delays up about 20 percent this year over last. The threat is that eroding subway, train, and bus service without a change in the tolling system will push more people to use private vehicles or car-sharing services, increasing congestion and exacerbating the spiral of disinvestment from transit.

• Subway Horror Stories Spring 2015
• Charting the New York Subway's Plunging On-Time Rate
• It Would Take Until 2067 To Fix Every New York City Subway Station
• The New York City Subway Is Full Of Garbage
• This Rat Just Out Here Grinding
• How to Save New York’s Overwhelmed Subways

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