NYC Transit's Service Struggles
NYC Transit released its quarterly "passenger environment
survey" at an MTA board committee meeting this week. Newspapers carried
stories on the continuing decline of subway crime, the planned failure
of the one-day unlimited ride "fun pass" and the plummeting quality
of announcements on the subways.
Other items that received less attention:
- The quality of announcements on buses declined from an abysmally low
starting level. Where bus announcements were clear 36% of the time in the
first quarter of '98, the share fell to 33% during Jan-Mar '99.
- Bus bunching or gaps in service worsened on 24 of 49 "key routes,"
and improved on only ten. The worst overall regularity of service decline
was in Queens. City-wide, about 60% of buses reach scheduled stops within
NYC Transit's allotted travel time - four in ten buses are bunching and/or
causing gaps in service. Transit officials said that while they "don't
control the rights-of-way" used by buses, they are taking steps to
move buses more efficiently through traffic that should show up in future
statistics (see MTR
#215). But they also said they may revise bus travel times to more
accurately reflect terrible traffic conditions. They did not acknowledge
that increasing official travel times is yet another argument for adding
more bus service.
