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L Trains Rated "Cleanest" In The Latest Survey
Among the New York City transit systems 22 sub-way lines, the best was the L with 88 percent of its cars rated clean, a 27 percent increase from the last report two years ago. Overall, the number of clean subway cars examined by the subway riders advocates, improved 3 percent since 2005, according to the ninth annual "subway shmutz" survey conducted between Sep-tember 20, 2007 and January 11, 2008. The No. 7 Flushing line tied for second best line with 22 percent cleaner cars than in 2005. Both the L and 7 are in a new car cleaning initiative.
Surveyors rated 50 percent of subway cars as "clean," a minor improvement from 47 percent of cars rated clean in a survey conducted in 2005. The worst performing lines were the E and Q, with only 29 percent of each line's cars appraised as clean. "Passengers on the L and 7 are riding cleaner cars, thanks to more cleaners and better use of them," said Straphangers Campaign staff attorney Gene Russianoff. "We hope that riders on the other lines will soon be seeing cleaner subway cars." Aside from the L and 7 trains, the study found significant improvement in seven other subway lines (2, B, E, G, J/Z, M, and V), and deterioration in six lines (3, 4, 6, C, D, and Q). Seven lines remained basically unchanged (1, 5, A, F, N, R, and W). Twenty-two hundred subway cars were rated for cleanliness of floors and seats, following New York City Transit's official standards. Cars were rated as clean if they were "basically dirt free" or had "light dirt." Since the survey began in 1997, it has not rated litter. Cate Contino, who directed the survey for the Straphangers group, said, "We are troubled by the disparities in cleanliness we found." Other survey results concluded: • The most deteriorated line was the 4, which fell from 94 percent in 2005 to 38 percent in 2007. In the last survey it was the cleanest line. • The most improved line was the E, going from 2 percent to 29 percent clean. The line remains, however, the worst performing line in the 2007 survey. • New York City Transit's own cleanliness survey showed that cars on the 7 and L were cleaner in service than the system-wide average, rating 96 percent on the 7 and L as clean, compared to an 87 percent average systemwide. The campaign urged transit officials, among other things, to devote more resources to cleaning subway cars, as they are now applying to station and track cleaning. (The two surveys show the L and 7, which each give its general managers more authority and resources, rated higher on subway car cleanliness when compared to the system-wide rating, thus supporting the MTA's conclusion that this "de-monstrates the effectiveness of the additional re-sources and shift coverage.") The campaign urged the MTA to add the results of its line-by-line cleanliness surveys to its web site, www.mta.info.
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