If subways are delayed almost every day, something’s wrong.

I hear this almost every day:

We are delayed because of train traffic ahead! Please be patient.

Or this:

We are delayed because of a sick passenger at Canal Street. Please be patient.

I see this on my Twitter at least once a day:

I get stuck on a train for 10 minutes a stop before where ever I’m going almost every day.

And it’s certainly not just me. So MTA, we’re tired of hearing it. It’s not helpful to provide delay verifications and ‘calming’ explanatory announcements; to customers it just sounds like you’re trying to mask clear inefficiencies and gaps in service. If something is always failing, then it’s broken, and it’s not daily incidentals causing it to fail.

So, stop giving us a load of you-know-what that we don’t want to hear. It’s like putting acid on an open wound. How about taking steps to fix it? I know there are budgetary constraints, but figure out how to deal with sick passengers and weather because guess what…those variables will always be there!

I’m not just complaining for the sake of it; if contacted for a focus group or working group on this, I would gladly show up. I challenge you to make it happen.