Give subway riders more notice, audit says

The state and city comptrollers have told New York City Transit to do a better job of letting riders know when subway service will be disrupted.

There are 660 miles of track and service often is disrupted at night and on weekends to make repairs.

But a report released Sunday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and city Comptroller John Liu found that projects that disrupt subway lines often go over budget and that NYC Transit's efforts to publicize the service changes have been inadequate. The audit also found that at times service is disrupted when track work isn't happening.

The report examined a random sample of 50 out of 3,332 service disruptions from Jan. 1, 2009, to Jan. 4, 2011, and found numerous inefficiencies.

The auditors said, for example, that NYC Transit should recalculate how many buses it uses to fill in for out-of-commission subway lines.

On one occasion when shuttle buses were used on a section of the 2 and 3 subway lines, "as soon as one bus left, another bus would pull up," the report said. "Each bus had only about five passengers, with a few more boarding along the entire bus route."

Subway-diversion projects often go over budget, the report said. The auditors examined 12 contracts and found that four of them were over budget by a combined $26.6 million.

The report said NYC Transit should ensure "adequate, documented justification is available to support spending in excess of budgeted amounts."

In its response to the audit, NYC Transit president Thomas Prendergast said that the agency's accounting system isn't set up for that type of budget monitoring, but it is working to ensure greater accountability and better budget estimates. The budget overruns mentioned in the audit may include costs not related to the diversions, he said.

The audit found track work often begins after the start of the diversion and ends early -- with 10 percent to 27 percent of the diversion window lost.

Prendergast said safety measures play a role in the delays and that the agency is working to improve efficiency.

The report also found that NYC Transit does a good job of publicizing service disruptions on the website of its parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but said it should post more and better signs in stations and on trains. Prendergast said that NYC Transit has modified its signage since receiving the report.

The auditors visited 39 subway stations and found few signs advertising service disruptions -- and none in any language other than English.

DiNapoli and Liu said the subway system has 2.3 billion riders a year but has budgeted just $228,000 to advertise service disruptions.

"We question whether Transit's budget is sufficient to alert millions of subway riders to diversions," the report said.