A crowd awaits the morning L train at Bedford Avenue. (Nell Casey/Gothamist)
Recent subway delays are hurting New Yorkers' wages, forcing people to miss medical and childcare appointments, and even leading some riders to lose their jobs, according to a surveyreleased Sunday by City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
The survey, based on in-person interviews conducted with 1,200 subway riders, found that 74 percent of respondents had been late to work, and 65 percent had been late to pick up a child, due to delays in the past three months. Half of riders said they'd been forced to pay for a taxi to get to work as a result of the delays.
When asked to grade recent subway service, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed gave the system a "C" or below, and one in seven respondents graded service as an "F."
(via City Comptroller)
“This is a crisis—there’s no doubt about it," Stringer said at a press conference on Sunday. "Delays are rising, service is declining, and New Yorkers are frustrated like never before. What we show here is that behind every delay, there’s a human cost, and behind every service disruption, there are lives affected."
That human cost is especially high in poorer communities, the report found. While just 10 percent of New Yorkers living in high-income zip codes said they'd been reprimanded at work because of delays, that number jumped to 24 percent in lower-income areas. In the Bronx, 54 percent said they experience significant delays more than half the time, compared to 45 percent in Queens, 40 percent in Brooklyn, and just 25 percent in Manhattan.
The findings echoed the results of a citywide survey of resident satisfaction conducted by the New York Times last month, which found subway approval in the Upper West Side to be significantly higher than in the Bronx.
To combat the growing delays, Stringer has proposed funding signal upgrades and track repairs through a $3.5 billion bond act. In June, a report released by the Independent Budget Officefound that the majority of signal updates and repairs scheduled to begin this year are currently delayed, and only one update in the current capital plan will be completed by 2018.
"A failure to invest decades ago led us to where we are today," Stringer noted. "Let there be no doubt that we need an all-hands-on-deck approach now. New York City’s ability to stay on top in this century—and the next—hinges on the quality of our transportation system.”
Representatives of the MTA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Source: http://gothamist.com/2017/07/09/report_majority_of_nyers_have_been.php