This may be a little hard to believe if you’re a daily subway commuter, but the MTA just released its statistics for 2019 service and apparently it was the best year in the past six years for on-time performance.
Average full-year OTP (on-time performance) surpassed 80% in 2019, for the first time since 2013. Also, December 2019 marked the seventh consecutive month that OTP exceeded 80% on a weekday.
At 80.3%, it’s an almost 20% increase from last year (2018), when the average OTP was only 67.1%.
“Thanks to the relentless hard work of our team, I’m tremendously proud to say that improvements are now the norm on the subways,” said MTA NYC Transit President Andy Byford in a press release. “I look forward to maintaining our upward trend in 2020 as we continue work on our Fast Forward Plan to modernize every aspect of our transit system and implement our part of the historic, unprecedented $51.5 billion MTA 2020-2024 Capital Program.”
Also, during the full year, there were an average of 45.5 major incidents each month, down from last year’s 68 per month.
Some other elements they report to be improving from year to year are:
- 83% of customers completed their journeys within five minutes of what was originally scheduled, compared to 80.2% last year.
- Track debris fires were down to 262 from 341 (which heavily contribute to delays)
- The average added time customers wait for trains after their scheduled time dropped 7.7% from last year
This is all part of the “Subway Action Plan” that involves spending $51.5 billion to fix the subway system by 2024.
Here’s hoping it continues!
featured image source: MTA