$398M TRAIN DRAIN

Delays cost biz

Subway delays could be costing city businesses and workers as much as $389 million a year in lost productivity and wages, a report by the city comptroller revealed on Sunday.

The report, which is based on MTA statistics from the last year and the city’s $34 average hourly wage, shows that the 5, 7 and A lines are potentially the most costly when it comes to delays.

Slow 5 trains topped the list, costing workers and their employers between $12.1 million and $31.5 million. Delays on the 7 line cost from $13.6 million to $29 million, and A-train slowdowns cost between $11 million to $28.4 million.

“Our entire economy is built around the subway grid, and yet we are allowing the subway grid to become chaos,” Comptroller Scott Stringer said at a press conference Sunday. “Businesses will not stay here losing up to $400 million a year.”

His study took the number of delays and length of delays and calculated the effect on the economy by plugging in the average city salary from the US Bureau ofo Labor Statistics. It comcomes on the heels of a July 2017 survey in which Stringer found 74 percent of people who responded to questions from his office reported being late to a work meeting because of subway delays.

Gov. Cuomo, who oversees the MTA, has weathered criticism for not improving the system’s crumbling infrastructure more quickly, and has called on Mayor de Blasio to allocate more city money for repairs, an outlay Hizzoner has resisted.

Stringer said on Sunday de Blasio should contribute to the MTA’s emergency plan, but with conditions.

“This is where I agree with the mayor,” he said. “I don’t think we should just put up the money without strings attached. We need to ensure that the money the city contributes goes to funding the subway system, that there’s a transparent process in place so we know where every city dollar is supposed to go.”