MTA: It’s not so bad

‘Major’ issue only if 50+ trains delayed

During the evening rush that day, the MTA reported delays in uptown A, B, C and D trains because of signal problems at 59th St. Columbus Circle at 5:30 p.m. It turned out the track circuit the flow of electricity through a section of track failed.

After trains started flowing, as workers flagged them through the tunnel, the problem was fixed - a nut and washer did the trick.

Ultimately, there were 31 rush hour disruptions, including 23 late trains.

Last week, there was a track circuit failure on the R and W lines at Canal St. Wednesday that disrupted 43 trips and signal problems south of Dyckman St. on the No. 1 line this past Tuesday that caused emergency brakes to trip on three trains, disrupting 38 trains altogether.

“Clearly, if you’re a rider who’s being inconvenienced by these, they may not rise to the major incidents category but they certainly do affect you,” Andrew Albert, the transit riders representative on the MTA board, told The News. “You would want to know what’s being done to take care of them.”

“Focusing on any one metric isn’t how we are going to improve the subway and that’s why senior management uses a myriad of ways to evaluate performance and deliver better service for riders on a daily basis,” Weinstein said.

Records from 10 incidents this month obtained by the Daily News show that all but two fell below the 50-train threshold, despite ruining commutes for thousands of passengers.

Take the morning rush hour on Sept. 11.

Delays rippled through the B, D, F and M lines when a train’s emergency brakes tripped at 8:51 a.m.

Unknown at the time, the train had struck the stop arm of a signal, triggering the emergency brakes, north of 42nd St.-Bryant Park along the Sixth Ave. line. And once service came back, crews discovered a wire in need of repair that made the red signal on the side of tracks look dark.

The MTA had to reroute, turn around, or terminate 16 trains and delayed 17 trains, for a total of 33 disruptions.

Given it was rush hour, that could be as many as 33,000 grumpy commuters inconvenienced. so-called major incidents accounted for only 11% of delayed trains on weekdays last month, a Daily News analysis shows.

There were 74 major incidents a month on average this year as of August, two more a month that during the same period last year, according to the latest MTA stats.

Major incidents in August accounted for on average just 6,758 of the average of 60,211 delayed train trips each weekday in August.

“Any delay is unacceptable no matter how it’s categorized among our dozens of detailed performance metrics,” MTA spokesman Jon Weinstein said.

He cited the intense repair schedule of the Subway Action Plan, the unfunded 10-year multibillion-dollar Fast Forward plan and a new initiative to cut 10,000 delays each month as “indicative of our unwavering commitment to improve service.”

Officials judge the success of the Subway Action Plan with other info, like passenger trip times. New stats show that 80% of riders got to their destination within five minutes of the schedule this August. Every subway delay is a major problem in a city where seconds count.

But not to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The MTA’s tracking of major incidents on the city’s subways fails to include many delays that inconvenience scores of riders - because they aren’t of a magnitude that fits the agency’s definition of “major.”

Snafus are classified as major incidents only if at least 50 trains are impacted. In interviews with several MTA board members who review the agency’s stats, two told the Daily News they believe the test is arbitrary and meaningless.

“I never thought that the 50-train delay metric was particularly valuable, and it’s been all over the place,” one board member told the Daily News.

MTA Chairman Joe Lhota vowed to “attack” major incidents like signal malfunctions and busted tracks when he launched an $836 million repair blitz at the end of July 2017.

Not only have the numbers barely budged, but the