Transit authority defends performance by citing 1903 inaugural year as appropriate baseline, reminds riders that horses were worse
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority issued a formal apology Friday for a week of service disruptions affecting the 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, N, Q, R, W, 4, 5, 6, 7, B, D, F, M, G, J, Z, and L lines, while simultaneously releasing a statistical analysis demonstrating that when performance is evaluated against the full 121-year operating history of the New York City subway rather than the previous month, current service actually represents a significant improvement, a framing MTA Communications Director Sheila Fitzgerald-Novak described as “essential context” and commuters described as “the thing that made me angriest this week, which is saying something.”
The Apology
The MTA’s statement, running to four pages plus appendices, expressed “sincere regret for the inconvenience caused” by service disruptions affecting an estimated 3.4 million daily riders over seven days. Delays ranged from eleven minutes on better-performing lines to what one straphangers’ advocacy group called “a philosophical category beyond delay” on the G train, which serves Brooklyn and Queens and which riders note has historically operated in a time zone that has no direct relationship with the schedule printed at stations.
“We hear you,” the statement read. “Your frustration is valid. We are committed to improvement. We are also committed to helping you understand that improvement is a journey, not a destination, and that the journey began in 1904 in conditions that, by any reasonable measure, were significantly worse than today’s, including the absence of air conditioning, the presence of aggressive strap competition, and a complete lack of a service alert app, which at least tells you in real time that the train is delayed, even if it cannot tell you why.”
The Historical Baseline Defense
The appendix to the MTA apology, titled “Performance in Perspective: A 121-Year View,” presents data showing that current subway on-time performance of 65.4 percent compares favorably to the 1920s average of 58 percent, the Depression-era average of 52 percent, and what the document describes as “the difficult period of the 1970s and early 1980s” during which on-time performance was not officially tracked “due to administrative challenges,” which New York transit historians note is a delicate way of describing a period when the subway was on fire both figuratively and, on multiple occasions, literally.
“We are not saying things are perfect,” Fitzgerald-Novak told reporters at a press conference on a platform where a train arrived six minutes late while she was speaking. “We are saying things are better. We are saying that the question of whether a transit system is performing well depends enormously on what you compare it to, and that if you compare it to a bad year, a very bad year, or a year in which the concept of performance was not measured, our numbers look quite good.”
The Gothamist noted that comparing current service to the Depression era was “a rhetorical choice with some nerve to it” and that most New Yorkers would prefer comparison to the Tokyo Metro, the London Underground, or any transit system in which “the train is either on time or something has gone genuinely wrong, rather than the system operating in a state of perpetual qualified lateness that is called normal.”
Riders Respond
At Times Square station during Friday afternoon rush hour, this publication spoke with seventeen commuters. Fifteen said they were aware of the MTA apology. Two said they had read it. Zero said the historical baseline reframe had changed their view of the week’s service. Several offered additional context of their own that this publication has chosen not to reproduce.
Longtime Queens resident and daily 7-train commuter Marcus Obi said he had been riding the subway for twenty-two years and that in his experience every MTA apology contained “three things: the word regret, a promise about signal modernization, and some reason why the thing that just happened is actually better than you think when you look at it correctly. After twenty-two years, I know all three sections by heart. I could write them myself. I sometimes think I should apply for a job.”
Signal modernization, the MTA confirmed, remains ongoing. Phase one completion is expected in 2029. Phase one began in 2018. The agency is confident in the timeline. The historical baseline, it notes, remains available for consultation whenever current performance requires additional perspective.
What the MTA Promises Next
The MTA committed to accelerated track maintenance on three lines, enhanced signal monitoring protocols on two others, and a renewed commitment to what its communications framework calls “honest, proactive customer communication” that the The City NYC noted had been committed to in the previous four major apology statements without observable change in the quality of in-station announcements, which remain the transit system’s primary medium for communicating information that is always delayed, often incomplete, and occasionally in a register that suggests the announcer has also given up.
A 122nd anniversary retrospective is already in preparation. Current performance, the MTA notes, will look even better then.
The MTA has also announced a new customer satisfaction survey that will be distributed via the MyMTA app, asking riders to rate their most recent service experience on a scale of one to five, with one representing “significantly delayed” and five representing “arrived within four minutes of schedule,” a threshold the agency’s own data shows is met approximately 38 percent of the time, making five-star ratings technically achievable but requiring the kind of disciplined selective travel scheduling that most straphangers say would defeat the purpose of having a transit system. The survey is voluntary. Response rates in the previous two quarterly surveys were 4 percent and 6 percent respectively, which the MTA said showed “strong engagement from riders who feel strongly,” and which riders who feel strongly confirmed was accurate, but not in the way the MTA appeared to mean.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/mta-subway-delay-apology-historical-baseline-defense-new-york/