\u201cGood\u201d grief.<\/p>\n
Massive subway meltdowns<\/a> made this summer the most hellish for straphangers since 2018, data shows \u2014 but MTA honcho Janno Lieber still insisted Wednesday that the transit agency had a \u201cgood summer.\u201d<\/p>\n Lieber pushed back on a Gothamist report<\/a> showing this June and July had the most delay-causing major incidents in eight years, claiming a rebound in August salvaged the season.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if you count August, ladies and gentlemen, this has been one of the best summers in MTA history,\u201d he proudly declared.<\/p>\n MTA Chair Janno Lieber insisted the MTA had one of its \u201cbest summers,\u201d despite evidence to the contrary. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post<\/p>\n Straphangers had to contend with the worst three summer months for \u201cmajor incidents\u201d since 2018. Annie Wermiel \/ NYPost<\/p>\n But even with Lieber\u2019s supposedly game-saving August, data provided by MTA officials themselves shows the three summer months were still the worst since 2018 \u2014 when the city was just a year past the notorious \u201csummer of hell<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Data from this June, July and August shows 194 major incidents \u2014 defined as snafus that delay 50 or more trains.<\/p>\n That tally falls behind the 217 major incidents recorded in summer 2018, but is the most since then, according to data.<\/p>\n Last year, there were 192 such incidents, the data shows.<\/p>\n June and July this year had 69 and 70 major incidents, respectively, before they fell to 55 in August \u2014 an improvement, but not the overall victory portrayed by Lieber, the new data shows.<\/p>\n Roughly half of MTA straphangers said they\u2019re dissatisfied with the agency\u2019s service. Annie Wermiel \/ NYPost<\/p>\n When asked if bad subway service should prompt MTA officials to rethink a coming hike in fares to $3<\/a>, Lieber said no.<\/p>\n He asked New Yorkers to look on the bright side, arguing that it\u2019s \u201cway, way, way, way cheaper\u201d to ride the subway than to own a car \u2014 and effectively asking them to ignore the MTA\u2019s record-setting budget<\/a>, major projects such as the long-awaited Second Avenue subway sucking up billions of dollars<\/a> and transit officials imposing congestion pricing on Manhattan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we think the summer overall was good,\u201d he said. \u201cWe obviously had a tough couple days in July. It\u2019s not a secret that when the power outages happened at West Fourth Street, people got and then the system got hit. But overall, service was good.\u201d<\/p>\n Straphangers at the Lexington Avenue-59th Street station \u2014 where a smoking N train during Tuesday\u2019s afternoon rush hour caused a power outage affecting thousands of straphangers \u2014 simply weren\u2019t buying Lieber\u2019s rosy view.<\/p>\n Michelle Sanchez, 25, who lives in the Bronx, said her hellish experience on the subway during a July heatwave alone justifies not raising the fare.<\/p>\n She was trapped with her 4-year-old son for 40 minutes underground in a 6 train that had no air conditioning.<\/p>\n \u201cThe train sucks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so hot. No air conditioner was on and then they took us back to 125th,\u201d she said, meaning they had to turn around and go back the way they came after their sweltering wait.<\/p>\n The summer\u2019s subway meltdowns left some straphangers stuck on trains with no air conditioning. Stephen Yang<\/p>\n Another Bronx straphanger, Bernal Middleton, 65, said she travels all the time from her home to Queens and Brooklyn, with her service dog Pupaya by her side.<\/p>\n The service isn\u2019t good enough to justify even a 10-cent fare increase, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are full of s\u2013t,\u201d she said. \u201cThey wanna raise the fare, but they don\u2019t improve the service.\u201d<\/p>\n An MTA spokesperson insisted on providing results from the agency\u2019s customer satisfaction surveys. <\/p>\n The results show that MTA customer satisfaction has increased \u2014 from 47% in spring 2024 to 57% this spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGood\u201d grief. Massive subway meltdowns made this summer the most hellish for straphangers since 2018, data shows \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":198027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5248,9904,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,31145,28715,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-198026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-metro","10":"tag-mta","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-transit","18":"tag-subways","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-us-news","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115142885795810172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}