‘Door’ to hell

A TWO-MINUTE delay on a subway line earlier this month rippled into a 90-train backup across the system, the Daily News has learned — but the cause of the clog is up for debate.

The MTA pins the blame on sympathetic straphangers who the agency said held a No. 2 train’s doors open for too long on a recent sleety Tuesday morning — giving stragglers time to clamber across the slippery platform.

But agency supervisors who spoke to The News said the MTA is looking to avoid responsibility for subway slowdowns by ignoring the real reason things fell behind: tentative train operators who throttled down in reaction to the cruddy weather.

What isn’t disputed is the abominable butterfly effect — 90 delayed trains on the No. 2, 3, 5 and 6 lines, all because of the two-minute door delay that began in a Bronx station.

In internal records, the MTA listed the causes as inclement weather, excess waiting in the station and overcrowding, stemming from the door-holding.

But MTA sources said that the root reason for the massive delays was something else — and that the incident is indicative of how the agency misattributes the cause of late trains.

An MTA supervisor told The News that the two-minute lag on the No. 2 train could not possibly have caused 90 delays.

The true cause, the supervisor said, was that some operators slowed their trains in the bad weather out of an abundance of caution and fear of being disciplined for overrunning a station. “For them to report that it is weather and customers, that is the MTA not taking the blame,” the supervisor said.

Transit officials revealed in a closed-door meeting on March 9 that more than 10,000 weekday subway delays in January had no known cause. As a result, they evenly distributed these delays across 14 categories of reasons for tardiness.

But MTA supervisors told The News that the cause for delays is sometimes shifted around because no group involved in the operation of the subway system — from the track workers to the train depots to the Police Department to the Fire Department — wants to shoulder the blame.

“Each doesn’t want to be blamed for lateness,” a supervisor said.

On March 13, the No. 2 train was supposed to start its trip from the Wakefield-241st St. station at 5:31 a.m.

But internal reports show the conductor radioed the MTA’s control center at that time to say riders were holding doors. The train eventually arrived at the Flatbush Ave. terminal more than six minutes late.

According to reports, the No. 2 train created a chain reaction of 90 delays. In total, 32 southbound No. 2 trains were late, while 30 southbound No. 5 trains were delayed. There were also delays on the Nos. 3 and 6 trains.

The MTA said its operators are highly trained. It rejected the allegation that operators travel slowly out of fear of being disciplined.

“Safety is our No. 1 priority and our operators are trained to operate at safe speeds and keep doors open for customers to board safely during inclement weather,” the agency said.

“These delays will be attributed to exactly what caused them — inclement weather and the safe operation of trains during slippery conditions.”