The MTA Will Increase Speeds On Select Subway Lines This Summer

In a recent interview with NBC New York, the MTA announced it would be speeding up service on the 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines. A rep shared that this change will improve rides for about 900,000 commuters.

“We’re able to reduce the trips on those lines by about 10 minutes or so,” NYC Transit President Rich Davey told the news outlet. “Doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you accumulate it over a day, it’s quite a lot of time.”

The transit authority has a “Speed Team” dedicated to researching where on tracks speeds can be increased, and also to retraining subway operators to be sure they know about speed limit increases in order to make service more efficient.

“If we improve the speed limit, for example, and you’re an operator who’s been traveling that same route for 20 years, you might forget that 10 mph is not longer, maybe it’s 20 mph,” Davey explained in the interview.

This recent improvement is also possible because ridership has not returned to pre-pandemic levels yet, so with less people on trains, it’s easier to get in and out of stations faster.

The new effort kicked off this Monday (6/28), so hopefully you saw a bit of a difference! They also recently sped up the A, D, N, Q, R and W lines but those were only a few minutes, so they may not be as noticeable.

Next up? Davey said they are analyzing how to speed up the L train in December.