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The good news from a recently released report by Riders Alliance is that there was really only one out-of-the-ordinary morning rush hour subway commute in NYC this August. The bad news is that it’s because it was the only one without delays.
Other than the One Fine Day that took place on Thursday, August 23 (we can’t go back, but the memory will stay with us forever), commuters last month experienced a total of 118 instances of signal problems between the hours of 6am and 10am on weekdays. According to the Riders Alliance data, there were 70 incidents where train cars malfunctioned during those times with the worst day of the month falling on Wednesday, August 14.
That wretched morning saw 15 signal malfunctions and 13 broken-down train cars.
“That’s a blinking red light that it’s past time to modernize our subway system,” Riders Alliance director John Raskin said in a statement along with the release of the report. “Every one of those signal malfunctions throws thousands of people’s daily lives into chaos.”
Currently, the leading cause of train delays is caused by problems with the antiquated signaling system in the subway. Fixing the signal system is a priority of NYC Transit President Andy Byford’s proposed Fast Forward plan which would cost an estimated $30 billion, and it would take about 10 years to complete. Financing for the plan has not yet been secured.
Curious to know how updating these crappy signals might fix the subway? Riders Alliance notes that the only line in the system that currently has new signals, the L train, had zero signal malfunctions during August.
Good thing the L train will be with us for the foreseeable future, right? Wait, what?