MTA subway performance continues to improve, reaching highest weekday on-time performance since 2013
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced new statistics showing continued and dramatic subway performance improvements achieved since the launch of the Subway Action Plan in 2017, according to an announcement from New York City Transit (NYCT) President Andy Byford and Department of Subways Senior Vice President Sally Librera.
On-Time Performance (OTP) numbers reached 84 percent on weekdays, up from 68.8 percent in August of 2018. OTP measures the percentage of trains that arrive at their terminal location within five minutes of their scheduled arrival time and made all scheduled stops. Meanwhile, major incidents, which are defined as incidents that delay 50 or more trains, continued to decline at a rapid clip as well, with just 38 such incidents in August. That figure represents a nearly 40 percent reduction from the same month last year and marks a new low since NYCT began compiling data on the metric in 2015.
MTA officials credited the improvements, which will be released in full in the coming week, to the critical maintenance work done during the Subway Action Plan and to the data-driven processes, full employee engagement and optimal operations focus set forth in the Fast Forward Plan and implemented in programs like NYCT’s Save Safe Seconds campaign. Subway speeds have been safely increased at 150 locations.
“I am immensely proud of my colleagues throughout the Department of Subways and in Operations Planning who have once again produced incredible results,” Byford said. “Today’s subway performance numbers provide yet another reminder that thoughtful and strategic decision making that targets the root causes of delays and that focuses on getting the basics right can yield outstanding results. We still have to improve further, but as the data definitively shows, things are markedly better than they were before we launched the Save Safe Seconds initiative, part of our Fast Forward plan, last summer. Our combination of data-driven decision making and critical investment in overdue maintenance through the Subway Action Plan has the entire system in a much better place than it was even a year ago.”
“By better tracking performance across a host of categories, we are pinpointing problem areas throughout the system,” Librera said. “This has allowed us to more precisely determine how best to deploy our maintenance and repair efforts. Taken in tandem with our work to identify more efficient ways of safely operating trains, we are seeing the sorts of dramatic improvements that can be achieved when the entire subways team is engaged in delivering improved service for our customers. There are too many people to name that deserve immense credit for delivering better service and I’m proud to work with them each day.”
August also saw an improvement in the reliability of NYCT’s subway car fleet, particularly the air conditioning systems. Overall Mean Distance Between Failure (MDBF) figures increased by nearly eight percent compared to last August, while the system’s new technology cars reached a 12-month average MDBF of 208,072 miles.
That figure is the system’s highest in over six years for the new technology cars, which currently make up 55 percent of the fleet. The Car Equipment team committed to improving air conditioning reliability implemented several management strategies to monitor performance and rapidly address any issues as they were found. The result was a 30 percent reduction in the number of “hot cars” compared to last year and over 98 percent of cars found with comfortable temperatures during weekly inspections.
Additional performance highlights from August:
Weekday Major Incidents, Service Delivered, Additional Train Time, and Customer Journey Time Performance were all the best since they were introduced in 2015.
Weekday delays decreased by more than half to the lowest level since June 2013, while weekday on-time performance (OTP) was the highest since April 2013.
OTP improved on every line in the system, with a larger improvement on B Division lines than on the A Division.
Additional train time, a category that measures the average additional unanticipated time spent onboard a train compared to one’s scheduled travel time—went down nearly 45 percent, with riders spending an average of 33 fewer additional seconds aboard their trains.
Commendations for Subways were up 91 percent per 100,000 journeys.
MetroCard complaints were down 7.1 percent compared to August 2018.
