MTA New York City Transit today announced updated statistics for NYC Subways showing continued subway performance improvements thanks to the sustained success of the Subway Action Plan and the Save Safe Seconds initiative, with weekday on-time performance reaching 81.5% for the fifth consecutive month that OTP has remained above 80%.

“I am very proud to see that subway performance continues to improve thanks to the hard work of our team and our unrelenting drive to get the basics right,” said MTA NYC Transit President Andy Byford. “Improvements are the norm now, and I expect we will continue to get better results before we embark on the modernizations and upgrades in the next proposed MTA Capital Plan.” 

“It is extremely gratifying to see not just improvements in our operational metrics but also across customer-focused metrics because it shows that our customers are seeing and feeling the improvements too,” said Sally Librera, NYC Transit’s Senior Vice President of the Department of Subways. “We are working hard to keep our customers’ confidence that this is a system that will get them where they need to go -- now and far into the future.”

October’s weekday OTP jumped 15.9% from a year ago, with eight major subway lines also reaching weekday OTP of 80% or higher in October. The improvements are a significant departure from the same period one year ago when only one subway line – the Canarsie L line – logged similar performance. Customer-focused metrics such as additional platform time, additional train time and customer journey time also improved compared to last year, demonstrating that the incremental gains from the Safe Save Seconds campaign continue building to tangible service improvements felt by customers across the system.

NYC Subways also met its internal delay reduction target for the 14^th month in a row, leading to the number of major delays decreasing by nearly 38% year over year. Systemwide, 44 major incidents resulted in train delays in October, an improvement of 15% compared to the same period in 2018.

OCTOBER SUBWAY HIGHLIGHTS:

• Weekday major incidents: 44, compared to 52 last year
• Additional platform time, which measures the average added time customers wait for trains compared to the schedule: Time savings of 5 seconds, or a 6.5% drop from last year
• Additional train time, which measures the average added time customers spend on a train compared to the schedule: Time savings of 18 seconds, or a drop of 24.3% from last year
• Customer journey time: More than 83% of customers completed their journeys within five minutes of the scheduled, compared to 79.9% last year. 

ABOUT THE SUBWAY ACTION PLAN

The Subway Action Plan launched at the direction of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo in July 2017, and was funded by the Governor, Legislature and the City. With the goal of stabilizing and improving the 115-year old subway system, the plan’s extraordinary measures have been critical to recent performance improvements. Since the Subway Action Plan launched, MTA workers and contractors have:

• Cleared more than 75,000 street grates to prevent ingress of litter and leaves that build up on the tracks, causing fires and clogging drains.
• Sealed more than 7,300 leaks to prevent water ingress that causes power and signal problems, deterioration of track and other equipment resulting in unplanned service changes, delays and track fires.
• Installed 54 miles of Continuous Welded Rail (CWR) across the system, replacing jointed rail, which is more prone to rail defects that delay trains.
• Repaired more than 27,000 minor track defects that if not repaired can cause delays.
• Performed more than 160 miles of track rail grinding to improve ride quality and reduce defects
• Completed more than 1,500 priority maintenance and repair tasks to improve reliability of signal and switch equipment.
• Rebuilt and modernized more than 430 signal stops to be moisture proof and avoid service interruption
• Repaired door control units on over 1,000 cars in our oldest fleets to improve reliability of this critical component that cause 40 percent of car breakdowns
• Completed a deep cleaning initiative of more than 100 subway stations.
• Enhanced 217 stations via a focused cleaning and repair campaign led by Group Station Managers