DiNapoli rails at MTA over subway delays

STATE CONTROLLER Thomas DiNapoli blasted the MTA on Sunday for a dramatic decline in service that has caused frustrating delays for riders across the five boroughs.

Discussing an audit released last week by his office that found a large uptick in delays between March 2013 and 2014, DiNapoli said he found “that the city is going backwards.”

“They have a deteriorating on-time performance record. They’ve actually lowered their expectations. They had a goal of about 90% to 92% on-time performance. They’re falling behind on meeting that,” DiNapoli said on John Catsimatidis’ Sunday radio show “The Cats Roundtable” on AM 970.

“And instead of gearing up to meet that, they’re lowering the goal to 75%,” he said.

“It seems like they’re putting less of a priority on on-time performance, and we think that’s a concern,” the state’s chief financial officer said.

The comments came days after his office’s audit found delays across the system have grown so much that trains are having a tough time making it to their last station on time — a metric known as on-time performance.

Most of the delays — 63.3%, or 316,000 — were due to factors under the MTA’s control, like equipment problems and track gangs doing maintenance, the audit found.

The 4 train was hit with the most holdups — 50,328 on weekdays — between March 2013 and 2014, according to the audit.

The MTA has defended its handling of the delays and said last week it has been testing ways to decrease one of the biggest causes of delayed trains — overcrowding.