It’s 3: 00 on a Tuesday morning. Juan Rodríguez’s little eyes look like tiny silver links on his tired face. The Colombian cannot hide. His body screams for a bed after a double shift of more than 14 hours at the bar-restaurant where he works.
When you arrive at the Delancey station, on the Lower East Side, or Loisaida, as they call it many Latinos to that Manhattan neighborhood, the immigrant from 20 years pick up the pace. He pulls the MetroCard out of his pocket upon hearing a train approaching. He is hoping it will be his. He wants to get to his house. but disappointment is drawn in his eyes. It was a train in the opposite direction. The worst, the board that shows the service schedule, indicates that the F train to Queens, will pass in 30 minutes. Frustration consumes him.
“I’m tired of these trains passing by at night whenever they feel like it. It is a lack of respect with us, that after spending all day grinding, we can not even have the guarantee that we can catch a fast train, ”says the father of the family, who in the midst of yawns adds that a journey that in the day would do in 37 minutes, at nights and weekends, they easily become up to three hours.
“We are losing valuable hours because of the MTA. Here at Delancey I have to wait 18, 40 And till 50 minutes. And in Queensboro Plaza, where I have to make my transfer to the N, always, or I wait for others 35 minutes or I have to walk away, exposing myself to being robbed or robbed“, added the Latino worker.
And that seems to be the story that when putting on the sun in the so-called “Gotham City”, thousands of users who depend on public transport in the Big Apple have to live. Users denounce that they are even receiving discriminatory treatment with respect to daytime passengers due to the lack of equitable flow of service, for which they demand that there be more trains 24 hours.
“I am already thinking of retiring from my job and looking for something closer , or buy a bicycle to get around, because at night when I finish there is not a day that I don’t have to wait half an hour, and even more for each train I have to catch. They are very slow, or sometimes there are detours and little surprises”, Gaspar Ordoñez commented angrily.
The Mexican, who works in a neighborhood store in Brooklyn, he adds that in addition to the inconvenience of long waits, he is afraid because the stations where he has to take his train are full of people with mental disorders.
“The City He says that he is doing a lot to get the crazy people off the trains and that is not happening. Every week there is one of those crazy people who threatens me and it’s not because I’m scared, but one day I think I’m not going to free her. I invite you to come to Spring Street at night and look at the filth that is around here, and one is exposed to everything without fast passing trains,” added the poblano, who threatened not to pay for the service again until he receives a fair treatment. “The MTA complains that many people still don’t use the trains or that many don’t pay, but please! how is one going to pay for such lousy service. I hope they make changes and fix security and put trains on more often… but as José José says: I doubt it”.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is clear about user complaints, since in a general report on the performance of the transportation system presented this September, highlighted that almost the 38% of the passengers consulted expressed their annoyance at the long waiting times and security.
“Reductions in subway and bus service have left New Yorkers alone on the streets and in subway stations for long periods of time, especially in the middle of the night. This is a completely unforgivable recipe for danger, ”said another user, who identified herself as Norma G, who is also an activist. “New York must increase the frequency of buses and subways to ensure that New Yorkers get to their destinations safely and on time.”
Passenger rights groups have also raised their voices demanding that the MTA increase the flow of service throughout the day and night, every day of the week, including Saturdays and Sundays, not only because they consider that it would solve the headaches of users tired of waiting, but because it would decrease criminality in the system.
This has been defended by the Riders Alliance organization, which is calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to invest $225 millions in transportation, to improve service and ease the desperation of working-class and low-income New Yorkers who depend on trains. Through the “6 minutes” campaign, said group urged the state authorities to inject resources into the MTA so that the maximum waiting times are always six minutes, not five or seven times that time, as users affirm currently occurs to late hours at night.
“The frequency in (the train service) is fairness”, assured Ronnie Alvarez, a member of the Riders Alliance. “A large part of the people in the city do not own cars and do not take taxis frequently.”
Riders Alliance has insisted that increasing the train service would be a huge attraction for more passengers Believe in the Subway again and return to your cars, because despite the improvements in the numbers of subway users, the transport system still shows a reduction of almost one 40% compared to movements before the pandemic.
Passenger advocates insist on that only the 40% of subway lines run at least every six minutes during peak hours, while they said that less than 00% of the lines do it on Saturdays and only the L train provides service frequent on Sundays.
“Infrequent service leaves passengers waiting longer on subway platforms and at bus stops, too often feeling vulnerable and anxious. Long waits contribute to anxiety and frustration in transit leading to disputes between riders, which can make the system less welcoming and also delay service,” Riders Alliance said in a statement.
“Long waits give people a reason not to ride the subway or bus, taking away the safety in numbers that made the New York subway system so safe for a generation before the pandemic. Due to travel patterns, women, people of color, and low-income service workers are more likely to feel less safe due to infrequent service,” added the subway ridership advocacy group.
The MTA, for its part, has defended its work, assuring that they have made improvements in several points such as the frequency of trains, and although they have not specifically referred to the complaints about the night service and the call for For service to be increased, that agency’s president and CEO, Janno Lieber, has frankly said that more resources are needed to address the system’s needs, as his pocketbooks are broken. The shortfall is about $1,600 millions per year.
“I would love to add more service, but first we have to solve the budget problem. The real problem is the economy: can we afford it? At this time, the MTA, due to the reduction of passengers due to COVID, has a structural deficit, ”said the official.
The head of the MTA announced that they recently appointed a service czar on weekends, who will focus on complaints, and warned that some delays have to do with construction work being carried out.
“We want to make sure that weekends are when people really travel to higher levels relative to the pre-COVID percentage. People choose to use public transportation when they have a place they want to go, be it the theater, the ball game, the beach. So, we have a lot of customers, who we have to serve well,” Lieber said. “We’re also trying to do a lot of construction work on the weekends. I have to balance those two and offer more predictable and more frequent weekend service.”
Governor Hochul, for her part, made it clear that although the State controls the reins of the MTA, the resources to implement improvements not only come from the state budget.
“There are different sources of financing for the MTA, they are all important, it is not a single source, It is not just the state budget, it is not just the rates, and we are also looking for other options,” said the president. “I believe in an all-of-the-above approach to make sure we have sustainability, but not just keep the trains running, but be able to make the kind of investments that we’re talking about and make sure we have the technology, signal changes and changes. to the system”.
And while the MTA promotes some type of change so that “the little miracle” is done and bored and desperate users with long waits for trains at night and on weekends can arrive home sooner, passengers like Alejandro Rodríguez, confess that their patience has run out and they prefer to step aside.
“I already sucked (tired) of this filthy service. Starting tomorrow I’m going to ride a bicycle, because that’s the only way I’m sure I won’t have to wait like a fool at the stations,” said the young worker, who said that last Wednesday night he got tired of waiting for the N train to Astoria. in Queensboro Plaza more than half an hour and never happened. “Hopefully those people from the MTA get serious now, shorten waiting times, and understand that New York is a big city and not a town, where you can ride a horse. And don’t even try to raise fares if you don’t raise the quality of service“.
The New York subway service in figures
- 61.3% of the passengers who used to take the train before the pandemic have returned
- 32. 7% of former users still do not return to the metro
- 38% almost of the passengers do not sit satisfied with the service
- 16% feel the service is lousy
- 48% of passengers feel satisfied
- 95.8% assures the MTA is complying with the service
- 18% MTA Says Delays Decreased in August Compared to July
- 4 .6% is the current average of service delays, according to the MTA
- 17-40 minutes denounce passengers are the waits at nights and weekends for a train
- 73% of users feel that there are very few police officers at the stations
- 22% feel that there is a good police presence
- 10% feel that there are too many policemen in the seasons
- 3’875.07 passengers using the train in a single day has been the highest figure in September
- 30% feel the service is bad
2896504000% and less of metro users feel very satisfied
6.4% trips were delayed due to days of extreme heat and heavy rain.