MTA CHAOS HAMMERS CITY WORKERS’ COMMUTE
Subway delays cause huge drain on city
CITY WORKERS have been getting clocked by the MTA’s crumbling subway system and are on track to set a record for being late to their jobs because of service disruptions.
So far this year, city employees have missed 17,143 hours of work due to transit delays, according to an analysis by the Independent Budget Office. That puts city workers on pace to miss nearly 26,000 hours of work for the year — a nearly 30% increase from previous years.
Workers missed 19,417 hours due to transit delays in all of 2016. In 2015, subway headaches were blamed for 19,142 missed hours, up 5% from 18,191 in 2014.
“That shows very clearly that this is a problem that has been getting worse,” said Nick Sifuentes, deputy director of the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance. “It went from being a slow-burn crisis to an emergency.”
The Daily News asked the IBO last week to crunch the numbers.
The IBO analysis showed that nearly all the dates with the most missed hours of work due to a transit problem correspond with major subway meltdowns. And most of the top dates over the past four years occurred in 2016 and 2017.
The findings show the real impact delays can have on city operations.
On Jan. 9, for example, city employees missed a total of 1,075 hours of work when transit problems made them late.
That Monday morning, an ice-blocked pipe started spilling water onto the tracks at the West Fourth St.-Washington Square station, disrupting commutes on eight subway lines.
The leak wasn’t fixed until 9:48 a.m. — three hours after the mayhem began.
April 21 was another date where large numbers of city employees punched in late for work due to subway issues.
That Friday morning a power outage shut down the 53rd St.-Seventh Ave. station for several hours, backing up trains throughout the underground system. In total, 1,066 city workhours were lost, according to the IBO.
City workers missed another 725 hours due to transit problems on May 9. That morning a power outage at the DeKalb Ave. station at 8:30 a.m. snarled rides on the B,C, D, F,N, Q, R and W lines. Service was restored an hour later.
A spokesman for Mayor de Blasio said the lost hours are more proof that the state should back his tax plan to save the subway system.
“Riders’ cries might be out of Albany’s earshot, but they’re mad as hell and they won’t stand for it anymore — including our city employees,” said mayoral spokesman Austin Finan.
“The state should step up now and support the mayor’s plan to tax the wealthiest 1% to pay for the fix of our subways and buses, and return the halfmillion dollars it took from the MTA to fund the immediate turnaround plan. It’s time to get to work — literally.”
An MTA spokesman said the city should shoulder some of responsibility and pick up part of the tab to fix the subway system.
“Any increase in delays experienced on the subway show the critical need to support and fund the MTA’s Subway Action Plan and why City Hall and Mayor de Blasio should step up and fund their half of the plan,” the spokesman, Shams Tarek, said.
The IBO based its analysis on a city worker database known as the Citywide Human Resources Management System. The database shows all excused lateness due to transit delays.