Subway Shmutz

The Straphangers release their annual report of subway cleanliness and the good news is that the subways are a little bit cleaner, improving to 66% of subway cars being clean from last year's 59%. However, cleanliness is not that high a bar, as the Straphanger's Gene Russianoff says "a 'moderately clean' car can have a dingy floor with one or two sticky dry spots." Thus he also calls New York City Transit's 80% "moderately clean" goal a "low level of performance" and would the city to aim for 95% of cars to " have either no or 'light' interior dirt." Some other findings:

The percentage of clean cars has more than doubled since 1999-2000.

Cars on ten subway lines saw significant improvement since last year's survey (3, 4, 5, 6, B, C, D, J/Z, Q and R), while cars on only three lines grew worse (7, G, and W). Cars on the remaining nine lines were largely unchanged (1/9, 2, A, E, F, L, M, N and V).

The worst performing line was the C, which had the smallest number of clean cars at 48%. The C also performed worst in last year's survey, although its performance improved from 31% last year to 48% in this survey. The best performing lines were the 3 and 5, with 89% of those cars rated clean. (See table two.)

One C-train rider tells the Post, "These trains are always dirty. It's really hard to get a seat sometimes because everything is so sticky." And another C-train rider told the Times she "seen everything from doors smudged with dog feces to seats soiled by spilled milkshakes," but added, "But the worst is a dirty pole. I can do without a seat, but when it's crowded and the train is rocking, I need something to hold onto." Word up...and how did she know it was dog feces, and not some other kind of feces?