New York commuters aren’t imagining things: Though the MTA is trying to gloss over the facts, it was another rotten summer for the subways.
Data the agency released last week show an increase in major incidents underground, longer wait times and more delays caused by system disrepair.
The 138 incidents that delayed 50 or more trains in June and July marked worst for those months since 2018.
Responding to a Gothamist report on the new stats, NYC Transit big Bill Amarosa tried to paint the bad news as an illusion caused by the MTA changing how it tracks data in 2023, so that more delays get classified as “major incidents.”
First, note that switching up data-tracking methods is a favorite bureaucratic trick for frustrating critical use of data that must be made public.
Second, that still leaves performance worsening since 2023.
Plus, this isn’t the only data pointing to fresh woes this summer.
Specifically: The number of weekday train delays was roughly the same in 2025 as 2024 (one in five!) — but delays got more miserable, as the amount of time riders spent waiting (on a platform or in a train), compared to the scheduled wait time, hit a near five-year high.
For the real kicker, step back just a couple of weeks.
We fumed last month that the MTA is blowing $7 billion on the Second Avenue Subway expansion, yet begged the city for billions in March to fund much-needed infrastructure repair and preservation; Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office then pointed to a 2.4 percentage-point bump in weekday subway on-time performance for the first six months of the year as proof of system improvement.
Now new MTA data suggests things went downhill right after: More delays caused by “infrastructure and equipment” problems in July than in any month since 2020.
Indeed, a power outage near the West Fourth Street station left commuters across the city stranded during rush hour twice in one week at the tail end of July.
No doubt: The crumbling system is the chief cause of straphangers’ pain.
But the MTA keeps proving it’s not a good steward of the funding it gets, burning cash on projects like a $252 million emergency intercom system that gets flooded with prank calls — money that should be going to core system repairs and upgrades.
It doesn’t help that so many of the MTA’s projects end up years behind schedule and millions over budget.
Subway riders get the double-whammy of navigating constant construction and reroutes that are supposedly fixing a system that gets increasingly worse.
Any private-sector business would’ve cleaned up its act or been shut down a long time ago.
Yet the agency is never held accountable for its poor performance; the state just keeps finding new ways, like Hochul’s congestion-pricing scheme, to shovel more money into the bottomless pit.
New Yorkers aren’t dim: Despite all of the gaslighting, they can tell when their daily commutes get more grueling.
The MTA needs to quit with the excuses and start fixing the mismanagement that’s churning out such dismal results.
And its enablers in Albany need to start demanding better for their constituents — or be held accountable by voters.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
