A Deep Dive into New York City Subway Stations…how bad is it?

I had the opportunity to visit New York City for a weekend with a couple friends. We wanted to grab lunch across town so we took the subway from Times Square to Canal Street for the very first time.

As a regular user of the Washington, D.C. Metro system, riding the NYC subway was an eye-opening experience. There were frequent delays on our route, navigating the lines was difficult, and accessibility features were scarce. After this personal experience, I knew I had to take a deeper dive into the complexities of New York’s subway system.

The subway system is managed by New York City Transit, which is part of the larger Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). The MTA oversees a wide network of services ranging from subways and buses to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North. It is also responsible for developing and overseeing major programs and policies, including congestion pricing. Since January 5, 2025, New York City has implemented this policy, which charges vehicles entering a congestion-relief zone in Midtown and Lower Manhattan in order to reduce traffic and pollution.

Source: The Economist https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/01/07/what-new-yorks-congestion-charge-could-teach-the-rest-of-america

Beyond its primary goals, congestion pricing encourages people to utilize the public transportation system particularly the subway. Over the years, subway ridership in New York City has seen a general increase, particularly after COVID-19 and has seen minor fluctuations between months. The graph below shows total subway ridership, in millions, for each month from 2020 to 2025. Ridership is measured by the number of passengers entering and exiting stations during a given time.

Note: the steep decline at the end of the plot reflects only the first month of 2025, since data beyond January was not available. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn about ridership trends for the full year.

Given that millions of passengers rely on the subway and that policy decisions directly shape its operation, the Subway System stands as an essential mode of transportation. With such high ridership, the system operates under constant scrutiny. And when it falls short through delays, overcrowding, or safety concerns, the impact is even greater for the people who depend on it every day.

The Public Perception of Subway Systems

While ridership trends highlight how essential the subway is to daily life in New York, they don’t tell us much about the quality of the rider experience. To understand that side of the story, I turned to public perception and feedback from subway users.

I was curious to see how riders specifically viewed the MTA’s subway system. A closer look at public sentiment reveals that feedback about the subway is overwhelmingly negative, especially compared to other services offered by the MTA. The graph below depicts a comparison in the ratio of the average of the complaint rate to commendation rate between a few of the services provided by the MTA over the years.

Note: I analyzed the Customer Feedback Metrics data provided by the state of New York, which contains cumulative complaints and commendations submitted by customers each month. While total counts are informative, they are not easily scalable, so I focused on comparing the complaint-to-commendation rates for subway stations on a yearly basis.

From this graph, there is a clear trend that the subways have the overall largest average complaint to commendation rate across all five years. Note that the data covers 2017–2022; no data beyond that period was available. While there are limitations to this dataset, it does suggest underlying issues contributing to the high ratio of complaints.

I took it a step further by narrowing into the complaints vs. commendations ratio just for the Subway System to identify the magnitude of the difference between complaints and commendations and how well the differences are depicted over the years between 2017-2022.

The dumbbell plot shows a clear stagnation on the left-hand side, representing commendation rates. There is little deviation from the mean, indicating that the number of commendations has remained consistently low. In contrast, beginning around 2020, complaint rates rise above the mean, reflecting growing dissatisfaction with the subway system. Over time, the gap between complaint and commendation rates has widened, highlighting an increasing disparity in rider sentiment.

Investigating the Problem

Now that we have established that there is clear negative outlook on the subway system, I will further dive in to the question of the why? Why are there many complaints? To investigate, I scraped MTA Customer Feedback data from 2014–2019 to analyze the causes of complaints. The treemap below highlights the top six subject-matter categories for subway-related complaints.

Based on the tree map, 24.7% of the complaints were regarding improper functions and repair/damaged facilities and 22.7% of the complaints were regarding late and delayed services. I decided to investigate these top two issues further, along with one issue I personally observed during my trip: accessibility. In the following sections, I will analyze improper functioning, delays, and accessibility in detail.

Investigating Problem 1: Improper Functioning

Elevators and Escalators

Another common issue I observed at subway stations was the lack of functioning elevators and escalators. In fact, one of the primary complaint categories in the data was related to equipment and applications that were not operating properly.

Comparing both of the Boroughs, we can see that the subway lines in the Manhattan Borough had the most number of the Escalator and Elevator outages. The Manhattan Borough encompasses majority of the station lines as it goes through the major hot spots of the city, therefore it makes sense to that it would have greater outages and more riders. Therefore, it must be an issue that might be affecting many people that should be addressed. If stairs are the only available option at the station, then it doesn’t allow those who are disabled to comfortably access the line, leading me to the issue of accessibility. In general, we can see that equipment outages are rather an issue between boroughs.

Investigating Problem 2: ADA Accessibility

Accessibility is a crucial indicator of equity, as it ensures that all riders, including those with disabilities, can use the subway system safely and independently. Addressing accessibility issues is therefore essential to providing an inclusive transit system. According to the New York City Council, only 23% of stations (including NYCT and the Staten Island Railway) are equipped with ADA-compliant features. I wanted to explore what proportion of subway stations are accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Within subway stations, ADA-accessible features include elements such as auto gates (gates designed for riders who cannot use standard turnstiles) allowing equal access to the subway system. Other accessible features can include elevators, ramps, and tactile signage for visually impaired passengers, all of which are critical for ensuring equitable transit access.

The following interactive application shows the percentage of stations on each subway line that are ADA-accessible versus non-accessible. The majority of lines have more than 50% of stations that are not ADA-compliant. Additionally, the app allows users to filter by borough, providing a view of the proportion of accessible stations within each specific borough.

Link: https://sahanakrishnarajprojects.shinyapps.io/MTA_Accessibility/

Investigating Problem 3: Delays

Delay Times

One of the many issues that I witnessed from my time at Subway but was also a common frustration experienced by many others were frequent delays. Service unreliability can be extremely frustrating, as it affects jobs, schedules, and daily routines. The MTA tracks delays using several performance metrics, including how long passengers wait on the platform, how long they spend on delayed trains, and how often service deviates from the published schedule.

To understand the true impact of delays, I analyzed the MTA’s Customer Journey Metrics data set from 2020 to 2025, which includes average travel time, additional wait time, and journey performance across subway lines.

Link: https://sahanakrishnarajprojects.shinyapps.io/delay/

Delay metrics in the data set were represented by the average additional time daily per month. These were three of the common delay metrics.

  • Additional Platform Time represents how much additional time the rider for the train that is delayed

  • Additional Train Time represents how much additional time the passenger riders for a certain scheduled train

  • Additional Journey Time represents the sum of the additional train time and additional platform time

The application displays delay metrics for each subway line, broken down by time period (peak vs. off-peak). For example, Line 4 shows very similar average journey times during peak and off-peak periods, which is noteworthy. Other lines, however, exhibit significant differences between peak and off-peak times. These delays can result from various factors, including scheduled maintenance, emergencies, and other operational issues. On average, additional journey time across subway lines is roughly 2–3 minutes. While this may seem minor, such delays can accumulate over time, ultimately resulting in substantial lost time for commuters.

Causes for Delays:

After examining delays, we can explore the underlying causes. The treemap below illustrates the most common issues contributing to delays across different subway lines.

From this tree map, Infrastructure and Equipment take up a staggering 48.7 percent of the subject matter of the complaints. This can encompass unexpected issues on train equipment, railroad tracks and other facilities such as elevators/escalators. From a wider angle, many of these issues are interconnected and required attention on all fronts. One issue can affect the other leading to a chain of more issues ultimately damaging the average Subway ridership experience.

Conclusion: How Bad Is It, Really?

The New York City Subway remains a paradox: a critical public utility that people rely on, yet frequently complain about. The data shows there’s significant room for operational and perceptual improvement. Delays, infrastructure, accessibility are only few of the issues, and the list grows longer and longer. Hopefully, as infrastructure funding increases and policy initiatives take effect, these complaint trends will shift For now, the numbers confirm what many riders already know: it’s not great down there.