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How Politics and Bad

Decisions Starved
New Yorks Subways
Disruptions and delays have roiled the system this
year. But the crisis was long in the making, fueled
by a litany of errors, a Times investigation shows.
By BRIAN M. ROSENTHAL, EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS and MICHAEL
LaFORGIAPhotographs by JOHN TAGGART NOV. 18, 2017
After a drumbeat of transit disasters this year, it became impossible to ignore the
failures of the New York City subway system.

A rush-hour Q train careened off the rails in southern Brooklyn. A track fire
on the A line in Upper Manhattan sent nine riders to the hospital. A crowded F
train stalled in a downtown tunnel, leaving hundreds in the dark without air-
conditioning for nearly an hour. As the heat of packed-together bodies fogged the
windows, passengers beat on the walls and clawed at the doors in a scene from a
real-life horror story.

In June, after another derailment injured 34 people, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo

declared that the system was in a state of emergency.

But the problems plaguing the subway did not suddenly sweep over the city
like a tornado or a flood. They were years in the making, and they might have
been avoided if decision makers had put the interests of train riders and daily
operations ahead of flashy projects and financial gimmicks.

An examination by The New York Times reveals in stark terms how the needs
of the aging, overburdened system have grown while city and state politicians
have consistently steered money away from addressing them.
Century-old tunnels and track routes are crumbling, but The Times found that
the Metropolitan Transportation Authoritys budget for subway maintenance has
barely changed, when adjusted for inflation, from what it was 25 years ago.

Signal problems and car equipment failures occur twice as frequently as a

decade ago, but hundreds of mechanic positions have been cut because there is
not enough money to pay them even though the average total compensation for
subway managers has grown to nearly $300,000 a year.

Daily ridership has nearly doubled in the past two decades to 5.7 million, but
New York is the only major city in the world with fewer miles of track than it had
during World War II. Efforts to add new lines have been hampered by generous
agreements with labor unions and private contractors that have inflated
construction costs to five times the international average.

New Yorks subway now has the worst on-time performance of any major
rapid transit system in the world, according to data collected from the 20 biggest.
Just 65 percent of weekday trains reach their destinations on time, the lowest rate
since the transit crisis of the 1970s, when graffiti-covered cars regularly broke
down.

None of this happened on its own. It was the result of a series of decisions by both
Republican and Democratic politicians governors from George E. Pataki to Mr.
Cuomo and mayors from Rudolph W. Giuliani to Bill de Blasio. Each of them cut
the subways budget or co-opted it for their own priorities.

They stripped a combined $1.5 billion from the M.T.A. by repeatedly

diverting tax revenues earmarked for the subways and also by demanding large
payments for financial advice, I.T. help and other services that transit leaders say
the authority could have done without.

They pressured the M.T.A. to spend billions of dollars on opulent station

makeovers and other projects that did nothing to boost service or reliability,
while leaving the actual movement of trains to rely on a 1930s-era signal system
with fraying, cloth-covered cables.

They saddled the M.T.A. with debt and engineered a deal with creditors that
brought in quick cash but locked the authority into paying $5 billion in interest
that it otherwise never would have had to pay.
 In one particularly egregious example, Mr. Cuomos administration forced
the M.T.A. to send $5 million to bail out three state-run ski resorts that were
struggling after a warm winter.

At the same time, public officials who have taken hundreds of thousands of
dollars in political contributions from M.T.A. unions and contractors have
pressured the authority into signing agreements with labor groups and
construction companies that obligated the authority to pay far more than it had
planned.

Faced with funding shortfalls, the M.T.A. has resorted to borrowing. Nearly
17 percent of its budget now goes to pay down debt roughly triple what it paid
in 1997.

Its genuinely shocking how much of every dollar that goes to the M.T.A. is
spent on expenses that have nothing to do with running the subway, said Seth
W. Pinsky, the former head of the citys Economic Development Corporation.
Thats the problem.

Reporters for The Times reviewed thousands of pages of state and federal
documents, including records that had not previously been made public; built
databases to compare New York with other cities; and interviewed more than 300
people, including current and former subway leaders, contractors and transit
experts.

The examination found that the agency tasked with running the subway has
been roiled by turnover and changes to its management structure. Dozens of
people have cycled through high-level jobs, including many who left to work for
contractors who do business with the M.T.A. Byzantine layers of bureaucracy
have allowed transit leaders and politicians to avoid responsibility for problems.

But the theme that runs through it all is a perennial lack of investment in
tracks, trains and signals.

On a good day, managing New Yorks subway is a challenge. It is the largest

urban transit system in the country and one of the oldest in the world. It is also
one of the few to operate 24 hours every day. And in the past two decades, M.T.A.
leaders have guided the authority through the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane
Sandy, disasters from which it is still recovering. After the emergency declaration
this year, the authority unveiled an $800 million rescue plan that included
adding train cars and staff.

But politicians and transit leaders have not acted on a series of chances to
turn things around sooner. They ignored decades of warnings from state and city
comptrollers. They failed to pass a congestion pricing plan in 2008. They chose
not to give mass transit much of the proceeds from large settlements with banks
after the financial crisis. They brushed aside the findings of the M.T.A.
Transportation Reinvention Commission, a 2014 panel of transit leaders from
around the world.

And through it all, The Times found, the M.T.A. has used sloppy data
collection and accounting games that hide from the public the true causes of the
subways problems.

Much of this story unfolds in the musty pages of budgets and contracts. But
under the jargon and numbers is a world of misery. New Yorkers who depend on
the subways are missing court hearings, arriving late for medical appointments,
losing out on jobs or being robbed of time with their children.

Last year, for the first time in decades, the number of people riding the
subway actually slightly declined an astounding development in a growing city
with a booming economy.

Its heartbreaking, said David L. Gunn, a former transit system president

who helped drag the subways out of the 1970s crisis only to see the system
deteriorate again. I actually lose sleep over it. I get so mad when I see whats
happening.

While many politicians have contributed to the decline of the subway over
the years, the problems reached a fever pitch under Mr. Cuomo, who as governor
appoints the M.T.A. chairman and effectively controls the authority. Mr. Cuomo,
a Democrat who is expected to seek a third term next year and is also seen as a
potential presidential candidate in 2020, tried to stave off the emergency by
committing additional funding to capital construction and getting involved in
decisions about how to spend it. But several transit leaders said that the
interference backfired, and that the governor would have helped more if he had
introduced any legislation to boost funding for core maintenance.
 In a statement, Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, said the
governor was dedicated to improving the M.T.A., including by ensuring a record
$8.5 billion in state funding for capital needs.

Ms. Lever acknowledged that the subway was in unacceptable disrepair but
argued that politicians and transit leaders had done their best with limited
resources and a flawed agency. She said the problems stemmed from a lack of
accountability caused by the city and suburbs having seats on the M.T.A. board,
and the city and Legislature having power to veto capital spending.

A camel is a horse designed by committee, and the M.T.A. is a train service

run by committee, Ms. Lever said.

Another Monday Morning

On July 17, Chtina Muteba tried to catch a train from Inwood, in Upper
Manhattan, to her office in Midtown. Everything that happened next, every
seemingly tiny event that turned her commute into a frustrating crawl beneath
the city, could be traced to decisions made in Albany and City Hall years before.

It was just another day in what had become a maddening summer for the
citys subway riders.

Ms. Muteba, a 32-year-old advertising strategist, was thinking about a

meeting she was supposed to attend that Monday morning when she saw that her
usual entrance to the 207th Street station on the A line was taped off.

There was just someone who was working there, on the outside, on the
street, Ms. Muteba said. He said, Hey, its a block ticket, and I said, I dont
know what a block ticket means. And he said, You have to transfer.

No one told her that a fire, caused by debris on the A line track near 145th
Street in Harlem, was slowing whole stretches of the subway.

The humidity that day hovered around 70 percent, and the temperature was
climbing toward 85 degrees as Ms. Muteba headed to a 1 line stop down 207th
Street. Drawing closer, she saw a long line snaking up the stairs to the elevated
station. It was moving only incrementally, like an assembly line feeding into a
broken factory. She took her place at the end.
 When she reached the platform, she found that trains that usually arrived
every four or five minutes now seemed to be coming 10 minutes apart. She
pushed onto one and felt lucky to find a seat. It stopped at Dyckman Street, and
she braced herself as an enormous number of people got on.

As Ms. Muteba fought to get to work, other commuter dramas were playing
out across the system.

For years, officials had only partly funded signal repairs and replacements. Much
of the subways signaling equipment was decades beyond its life span. Just a few
months before Ms. Mutebas ill-fated commute, the M.T.A. had cut signal funding
by $500 million to support projects favored by Mr. Cuomo. Internal M.T.A.
records show that on the morning of July 17, at least 124 delays were caused by
signal issues on the 2, 4, E, F, G, J and M lines.

Nearly a decade earlier, a budget crunch had led M.T.A. officials to relax
standards for vehicle inspections and overhauls and allow maintenance jobs to go
unfilled. At least 24 delays across the city that morning had roots in
malfunctioning motors, faulty brakes or broken air-conditioning systems, records
show.

And the M.T.A. had saved more money by putting off track maintenance not
deemed absolutely essential. At least 55 delays stemmed from track problems that
morning not counting the fire that was slowing Ms. Mutebas commute.

By the time her 1 train left 168th Street, the car was impossibly full. She was
not unfamiliar with feeling crowded, having taken the subway since 2011. But
now people on the train were packed so tightly that it triggered a flight reflex. It
took her until 137th Street to elbow her way out.

Standing in the heat on the platform amid a horde of frustrated commuters,

she instantly regretted it.

Records show that ahead of the 1 trains creeping south that morning, a sick
rider was causing problems at 96th Street and a passenger riding between cars
was stirring trouble at 72nd.

To save money years earlier, the M.T.A. had eliminated its practice of
positioning people trained in medical aid at some busy stations. As one train and
then another were held up at two of the busiest express stops in the city, waiting
for emergency responders, it deepened the anguish for Ms. Muteba and for
untold thousands of others up the line.

Three trains passed her at 137th Street before she found one that she could
squeeze onto. By the time she got to her stop, her 30-minute commute had taken
nearly two hours. She emerged with a meeting to reschedule and a resolution
never to rely on the A train again.

Ms. Muteba said she commiserated with fellow riders that morning.

There was a lot of discussion about, What are we paying for?

A Steep Decline in Cash

New Yorks subway system has always struggled to get the money it needs.

Decades of cost-cutting and deferred maintenance led to the darkest days in

the history of the 113-year-old system: the crisis in the 1970s, when the subway
became a symbol of urban decay.

Officials rescued the subway with a simple formula: Invest in the system, and
it will improve.

After more than a decade of spending, about $50 billion in todays dollars,
reliability soared. Cars traveled 10 times farther before breaking down. Riders
returned in droves. It was a golden era; New York and its subway seemed to be on
the rise together.

Then, records show, officials pulled back.

It started with New York Citys mayors.

While the M.T.A., the sprawling organization that operates the New York
subway and bus lines, two commuter railroads and several bridges, is run by the
state, the subway is owned by the city. In addition to creating confusion, this
dynamic sparks funding battles.

Historically, the city has funded about 10 percent of the M.T.A.s total
budget.
 Mr. Giuliani decided to change that in 1994, when he became the citys first
Republican mayor in two decades. Facing a budget shortfall and eager to show he
could run the city without raising taxes, he announced he would cut the citys
contribution to the M.T.A.s operating and capital budgets by $400 million.

Mr. Giuliani defended the reduction by calling the authority bloated and
noting that it had a surplus the previous year but he did not suggest any
reforms to increase efficiency. Critics were outraged. Hundreds protested at
public hearings, chanting, No more cuts! At one hearing in Manhattan,
attendees waved posters depicting a two-headed mutant with the faces of the
mayor and Mr. Pataki, who was proposing his own cuts. Monster That Ate Mass
Transit, the posters said.

Weve spent 10 years clawing our way back, one M.T.A. official said at the
time. Youve only begun to turn the corner. It would be easy to go backward.

The mayor made the cuts nonetheless.

Despite the consternation, the reductions did not immediately cause problems.
That paved the way for other city and state politicians to make more cuts.

Mr. Giuliani did not return multiple messages seeking comment.

His successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, used city funds to help finance bonds
for a development project the extension of the 7 line to the Hudson Yards on
the Far West Side of Manhattan. But he otherwise left subway funding where it
was, which effectively cut the citys contribution by not allowing it to keep up with
inflation.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Marc La Vorgna, said the former mayor
contributed by fighting vigorously to get the state to adopt a congestion pricing
plan that would have provided a huge amount of revenue. Its hard to argue any
mayor in history has made a greater effort to improve the M.T.A., he said.

Mr. de Blasio has been hands off. He committed $2.5 billion in city funds for
the M.T.A.s capital program, but he rebuffed requests to increase operating
subsidies and has declined to provide money for the authoritys plan to address
the delays. During town hall meetings, he often quizzes attendees to ensure they
know the city does not run the subway.
 A City Hall spokeswoman, Freddi Goldstein, said the de Blasio
administration has contributed its fair share year after year. Ms. Goldstein
noted that the citys police officers patrol subway stations and that its residents
provide most of the M.T.A.s tax revenue. What the City of New York contributes
daily is bigger than the budget alone can show, she said.

Still, the budget shows that the citys contribution to M.T.A. operations has
dropped by almost 75 percent.

In todays dollars, the city gave the M.T.A. roughly $1 billion in operating
funding in 1990. This year, not counting money for managing some formerly city-
run buses, the city gave the system about $250 million.

The mayors stuck to the cuts despite a surge in property values that the
subways helped create. New York real estate values and property tax revenues
have quintupled since the early 1990s, according to the Independent Budget
Office.

None of that increased property tax revenue was earmarked for the subways.

Getting Less, Borrowing More

If the citys cuts hindered the subway, the states actions practically hobbled it.

Lawmakers in Albany trimmed funding for subway maintenance throughout

the 1990s, records show, even as the state budget grew from $45 billion to $80
billion. Then they kept funding mostly flat for years, despite the surge in
ridership.

Under Mr. Pataki, the state eliminated subsidies for the M.T.A., opting to
make the authority rely entirely on fares, tolls and revenue from taxes and fees
earmarked for transit. It also ended state funding for capital work.

The move rankled the state comptroller at the time, H. Carl McCall, who
warned that taxes and fees were unstable.

Mr. Pataki also started a trend of redirecting revenues from taxes. In 1995, he
pushed through a state income tax cut and helped pay for it by taking more than
$200 million in tax revenues that had been set aside for transit. His three
successors followed suit. At least $850 million has been diverted in the past two
decades, records show.

Richard Ravitch, the former lieutenant governor and M.T.A. chairman who
came up with the idea for many of the dedicated taxes as part of his plan to save
the subways in the 1980s, said it never occurred to him that the state would
redirect the revenue.

Its very disappointing, Mr. Ravitch said, adding that the diversions were
just another in a long list of examples of politicians taking the subway for granted
and neglecting to invest in its health.

This is the lifeblood of the city, he said. Everybody depends on it. And yet
nobody cares about it enough to think more than four years ahead. They only
want to think about the next election. Nobody is thinking about the future.

Budget shortfalls have led transit leaders to routinely raise fares to stay
afloat. The subway now derives more than 60 percent of its funding from fares, a
higher rate than almost any other transit system in North America.

Perhaps nothing has hamstrung the M.T.A. more than a maneuver Mr.
Pataki introduced in 2000.

That year, Bear Stearns, then a Wall Street powerhouse, approached the
governor with a proposal to alleviate an M.T.A. budget crunch: If the authority
refinanced $12 billion of its debt, the bank said, it could get a huge influx of cash
without having to pay for years.

Within weeks, a Bear Stearns executive was pitching the idea to skeptical
lawmakers in a marathon meeting at the State Capitol.

Critics denounced the move, saying it was a debt bomb that would hurt
future generations. But the lawmakers eventually signed off, and the M.T.A.
agreed to the deal in 2002.

The bankers and bond underwriters many of whom had ties to Mr. Pataki
or had donated to his campaign earned an estimated $85 million.

Mr. Pataki did not return messages seeking comment.

 Today, bonds have become the biggest funding source for M.T.A.s
construction needs. The authority has borrowed about $15 billion in the past six
years about 52 percent of overall capital funding, records show. In the 1980s,
only about 30 percent of capital work was financed by debt.

The current state budget director, Robert Mujica, who was appointed by Mr.
Cuomo, said it was sensible for the M.T.A. to borrow more today because interest
rates are much lower than in the 1980s. Using debt is a responsible way to invest
in assets that are going to last a long time, he said.

Still, most other American transit systems fund their capital work more by
government financing than borrowing.

Like the budget cuts in the 1990s, the borrowing did not immediately wreak
havoc on the subway. But more than two dozen current and former M.T.A.
officials said that years of underinvestment caught up to the system by the mid-
2000s. Reliability plunged, they said, and it kept plunging even when Gov. David
A. Paterson and Mr. Ravitch raised tax rates to benefit the authority.

They figured that the subway was fixed, and so they stopped thinking about
it, said a former budget director at the M.T.A., Gary G. Caplan. You can only
stop funding something for so long before it breaks. Thats what happened.

A State Piggy Bank

The subways budget has not only been squeezed. It has been milked.

Fees demanded by the state for bond advice are a prime example.

A bill passed by the Legislature in 1989 included a provision that lets state
officials impose a fee on bonds issued by public authorities. The fee was largely
intended to compensate the state for helping understaffed authorities navigate
the borrowing process. It was to be a small charge, no more than 0.2 percent of
the value of bond issuances.

It was not widely discussed, I can tell you that, said Richard L. Brodsky, a
Democrat from Westchester who served in the Assembly from 1983 to 2010,
including as chairman of the authorities committee. I dont think anybody
noticed it at all.
 The charge has quietly grown into a revenue stream for the state. And a lot of
the money has been sapped from one authority in particular: the M.T.A.

The authority a sophisticated operation that contracts with multiple bond

experts has had to pay $328 million in bond issuance fees over the past 15
years.

In some years, it has been charged fees totaling nearly 1 percent of its bond
issuances, far more than foreseen under the original law.

The Times uncovered the payments by piecing together state and authority
records and interviewing current and former M.T.A. officials.

Mr. Mujica, the state budget director, defended the payments, saying that his
staff meets periodically with the M.T.A. and its bond counsel to work out the
timing of what theyre doing.

He also said the fees were routinely paid by all authorities.

But records show that other agencies have had tens of millions of dollars in
bond issuance fees waived, including the Dormitory Authority, which is often
used as a vehicle for pork projects pushed by the governor or lawmakers. The
M.T.A. has not benefited as often from waivers.

Mr. Brodsky called the charges unsavory especially because state

funding cuts forced the M.T.A. to issue the bonds in the first place.

Theyre using the public authority system as a piggy bank, he said.

After questions from a Times reporter, Mr. Mujica said the state would no
longer impose bond issuance fees on the M.T.A.

Costly Undertakings
This was just one way that officials redirected M.T.A. money that could have gone
toward fixing the subway. The remaking of the Fulton Street station in Manhattan
was another.

Damaged during the Sept. 11 attacks, the station was eligible for federal
renovation money when Sheldon Silver took it up as a cause.
 Mr. Silver, who was then Assembly speaker and one of the states most
powerful politicians, envisioned not just a subway station in his district but a
soaring transit hub, the Grand Central of Downtown, complete with an
enormous glass dome and mirrors to filter sunlight into underground
passageways.

By 2008, the cost had shot past its original $750 million budget, and M.T.A.
leaders decided to scale back the project. But Mr. Silver sent a letter threatening
to veto the authoritys funding if he did not get what he wanted. The M.T.A.
quickly fell in line.

In the end, the project cost $1.4 billion more than the total annual budget
of Chicagos rapid transit system and did nothing to improve the subways
signals or tracks.

Mr. Silver, who stepped down as speaker in 2015 after being charged in a
federal corruption case, declined to comment.

There have also been costly overhauls at other stations. Bleecker Street in
Manhattan got improvements, including a neon light display, at a cost of $135
million more than twice the initial estimate. The remodel of the Cortlandt
Street station in Manhattan, also destroyed in the 2001 attacks, is still not
finished, despite $66 million in spending so far.

Last year, Mr. Cuomo pushed the M.T.A. to spend nearly $1 billion on
enhanced lighting, signs, countdown clocks and other upgrades at dozens of
stations, many of which were not considered most in need of rehabilitation by
M.T.A. leaders. The project, called the Enhanced Station Initiative, did not
include funding to make all the stations comply with the Americans With
Disabilities Act.

Mr. Cuomo also pressured the authority to spend tens of millions of dollars
to study outfitting M.T.A. bridges with lights capable of choreographed display,
install wireless internet and phone-charging ports on buses and paint the state
logo on new subway cars.

Joseph J. Lhota, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed M.T.A. chairman in June,

defended the spending.
 Service and reliability shouldnt just be while passengers are on the train. It
should be while theyre on the platform, he said, adding that not having phone-
charging ports was unacceptable in the 21st century.

But Roger Toussaint, who ran the M.T.A.s main union from 2001 to 2009, said
the spending reflected a pattern of focusing on flashy projects over maintenance.
The spinal cord of the subway system is the ability to move trains signals,
power and the actual track and infrastructure, Mr. Toussaint said. They havent
been spending money on the spine. Theyve been spending money on the limbs.

The state has also made the M.T.A. bail out other entities in need of help,
including the state-run ski resorts. The $5 million was sent in March last year,
after a warm winter in which the Belleayre Ski Center, Gore Mountain and
Whiteface Mountain saw a 25 percent decrease in visitors. In 2013, the M.T.A.
was made to send $5 million to an affiliate agency, the Triborough Bridge and
Tunnel Authority, to cover the cost of reducing tolls.

M.T.A. board members, who learned of the ski-resort bailout from an article
in The New York Daily News, hired a law firm to investigate the payments. The
firm concluded they probably were legal, according to records shared with The
Times, but several members said they were inappropriate nonetheless.

It would have been far more responsible for the state to have left that money
with the M.T.A. I love skiing, but if you want to ski at a state-owned ski resort,
buy a lift ticket, said James E. Vitiello, an appointee of the Dutchess County
executive. Mr. Vitiello is among several board members who have complained
that the governor has taken a stronger role in the authority and limited their
ability to direct policy.

During this period of spending, subway performance slid. The percentage of

trains arriving at their destinations more than five minutes late the M.T.A.s
cutoff for whether a trip is on time has increased in 14 of the past 15 years.
Mean distance between failure, the measure of how frequently trains break
down, has worsened almost every year since 2010.

The financial crisis in 2008 intensified the problems, in part because of the
M.T.A.s reliance on taxes and fees. Among other issues, revenue from a real
estate transfer tax plunged by 75 percent leaving the authority scrambling to
deal with a $1 billion drop in revenue.
 The M.T.A. curtailed 40 types of maintenance. Among other moves, it
lengthened schedules for routine work on most cars from about every 66 days to
every 73, and schedules for comprehensive overhauls from every six years to
every seven.

Mr. Lhota said the cuts, which have never been restored, were the biggest
reason for the rising delays. The maintenance intervals were stretched, and they
were stretched too far, he said.

Hurricane Sandy struck a few years later. The M.T.A. drew praise for its
response, but transit leaders said the storm took resources away from routine
maintenance.

Mr. Cuomo had steered clear of the M.T.A. during his first years in office, but
in his second term he took an intense interest. He placed aides within the
organization and, in an unusual move, made some report directly to him. He
badgered transit leaders about the construction of the Second Avenue subway on
the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And over the objections of some board
members, he canceled several M.T.A. capital projects to make room for his own
priorities.

According to high-ranking current and former M.T.A. officials, the moves

interfered with the authoritys plans to address the rising delays.

They also bothered the respected former M.T.A. chairman Thomas F.

Prendergast, who retired in January. Mr. Prendergast said his retirement was not
related to the governor, but several of his former colleagues said it was a factor.

Soaring Salaries
Even in the face of the financial crisis and budget shortfalls, the M.T.A. has given
concession after concession to its main labor union.

Members of the Transport Workers Union got a total of 19 percent in pay

raises between 2009 and 2016, compared with 12 percent for the citys teachers
union over the same period.

The labor contracts also gave members lifetime spousal health benefits and
free rides on the Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. (They already were
allowed to ride the subway for free.)

According to a former union president, John Samuelsen, the organization

has secured better deals over the past eight years than any other public labor
group in New York.

I look back with satisfaction on what, together, we have accomplished, Mr.

Samuelsen said in a September letter announcing that he was becoming the
unions international president.

Each of three deals signed from 2009 to 2017 cost more than the M.T.A.
anticipated, forcing it to take money from other parts of the budget. The 2014
deal, which cost $525 million, was funded by tapping into a pay-as-you-go
account that was intended to pay for capital work, former officials said.

Subway workers now make an average of $170,000 annually in salary,

overtime and benefits, according to a Times analysis of data compiled by the
federal Department of Transportation. That is far more than in any other
American transit system; the average in cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles
and Washington is about $100,000 in total compensation annually.

The pay for managers is even more extraordinary. The nearly 2,500 people
who work in New York subway administration make, on average, $280,000 in
salary, overtime and benefits. The average elsewhere is $115,000.

New York is more expensive than most other cities, but not by that much.
The latest estimate from the federal Department of Commerce said the regions
cost of living was 22 percent higher than the national average and 10 percent
higher than the average for other areas with subways.

Mr. Samuelsen rejected the idea that subway workers were overpaid, arguing
that it is a dangerous job in which assault is common. We earn every penny that
we make, he said. This is New York City. This isnt Mayberry. It costs $700,000
to buy a house in Brooklyn. What do you want us to make? Fifteen dollars an
hour?

Union rules also drive up costs, including by requiring two M.T.A. employees
on every train one to drive, and one to oversee boarding. Virtually every other
subway in the world staffs trains with only one worker; if New York did that, it
would save nearly $200 million a year, according to an internal M.T.A. analysis
obtained by The Times.

Several M.T.A. officials involved in negotiating recent contracts said that

there was one reason they accepted the unions terms: Mr. Cuomo.

The governor, who is closely aligned with the union and has received
$165,000 in campaign contributions from the labor group, once dispatched a top
aide to deliver a message, they said.

Pay the union and worry about finding the money later, the aide said,
according to two former M.T.A. officials who were in the room.

Mr. Cuomos office said in a statement that the M.T.A. handled its own labor
negotiations and that campaign contributions had not influenced any of his
actions.

A Vast Personal Toll

The cost of increasing delays can be measured not only in numbers, but also
in painful absences on special occasions, lost wages and blown opportunities.
Over the summer, The Times asked readers to share their experiences with the
subway. More than 1,000 responded, mostly with stories of sorrow.

Ashley Patterson, 24, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, began having anxiety

attacks on the subway this summer and now follows a careful routine to keep
calm during delays.

I think that thats something that the M.T.A. should be thinking about, Ms.
Patterson said. Its not just about the inconvenience of being late to work.
Theres this mental health aspect.

Laura Hernandez, 34, a city employee from Woodside, Queens, missed an

appointment to inspect the housing conditions of the clients of a social service
agency. I am a new employee on probation, and it does not look good to arrive
over an hour late for an appointment, Ms. Hernandez said.

Juliana S. Karol, 30, from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is a rabbinical
student at Hebrew Union College downtown. She was late to a meeting to discuss
her senior thesis, ordination and job placement. She was also 38 weeks pregnant.

I actually ended up writing my High Holy Days sermon about the subway,
Ms. Karol said. About the opportunities that the subway crisis gives us to
reframe both the gratitude we have when things are going right and how we
respond when they are not.

The entire fifth-grade class at Public School 32 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn,

had to cancel a field trip to see a movie a reward for completing math exams.

They had actually gone to the station, and they just ended up waiting
forever, said Dawn Reed, 52, whose son was one of the disappointed students.
She said she used the experience to teach him about managing expectations. Its
getting progressively worse, she said of the subway. And delays are a part of life,
and its difficult to have any sense of consistency.

Ariel Leigh Cohen, 26, from Sunnyside, Queens, missed an interview for a
job painting scenery for a major Broadway show. It would have paid twice her
salary as a salon receptionist and brought her closer to her dream of working in
show business.

I was trying to change my life and do what I came to New York to do, Ms.
Cohen said. It wouldve opened up another world of possibilities. Opportunities
like that dont come around often at all.

And then there are stories like Rosalie Osians. A chaplain who comforts the
terminally ill for Caring Hospice Services, Ms. Osian, 58, got word one Friday that
a patient was dying in Brooklyn, and she struck out on a 2 train from 72nd Street
in Manhattan.

She made it as far as Fulton Street downtown before an announcement told

her to switch to the 4 or 5. Problems on that line forced her to switch trains again,
and at one point she was left standing on a platform, racked by the need to be
with the patient and prepare the family for grief and pending loss. She was late
getting there but made it before the patient died.

Im not the only one, Ms. Osian said. There are people traveling the city all
day helping people. There are home health aides and others. And if the subways
are delayed, they cant get to their work.
 Avoiding Culpability
Although riders have bemoaned delays on the subway for years, they often have
no idea what is causing them.

This is a byproduct of 30 years of transit officials seeking to avoid blame for

the systems problems, The Times found.

Every day, officials collect data that could be used to improve the system. For
every incident that causes a delay, workers are supposed to log the time, location,
duration, cause and department responsible. In theory, the data could be studied
to identify patterns in delays and shed light on how they might be fixed.

That has not happened.

In 1986, the M.T.A.s inspector general discovered that the delay records
were seriously flawed and shot through with biased reporting, unauthorized
adjustments, illegible entries and omissions. In the 1990s, investigators twice
concluded that the count was riddled with errors and misrepresentations.

John Gaul, then the assistant chief of rapid transit operations, acknowledged
at the time that the process was susceptible to fraud because operators were being
asked to collect data on their own performances. In many cases, undue pressure
had been imposed on supervisors in the field to meet on-time performance
goals, he said.

Three former high-ranking subway officials told The Times that little had
changed since the 1980s. Before final delay reports are issued, M.T.A.
departments argue about who should be blamed. Sometimes, the reports reflect
more on a departments arguing ability than on its actual performance.

The officials also said that different tactics had been used over the years to
avoid culpability.

From September 2009 to May 2010, records show, some 530,000 delays
80 percent of all delays recorded were lumped into a category called
supplement schedule. The officials said that whenever maintenance work in the
system caused a scheduling change, virtually all delays were put under this label,
regardless of their cause.
 In recent years, the M.T.A. has stopped using the category.

Today, M.T.A. documents say that the most common cause of delays is
overcrowding. More than 111,000 delays were put into that category in the first
four months of 2017 alone. That was 37 percent of all delays.

New York politicians and transit leaders have seized on the figures to suggest
that most of the subways problems come down to its popularity.

But the M.T.A.s own records call that into question.

In March 2015, records show, more than 153 million trips were recorded,
making it one of the busiest months on record. There were 19,000 delays
attributed to overcrowding.

Last March, two million fewer rides were recorded, but 30,000 delays were
said to be caused by overcrowding.

Mr. Lhota said that quirks existed in all data and that M.T.A. officials
handled the classification consistently. He rejected any suggestion that officials
were manipulating numbers to make themselves look better or blame customers
for problems. The delays are solely the responsibility of the New York City
Transit Authority, he said, referring to the agency that runs the subway.

Still, the murkiness of what is truly causing delays only feeds frustration for
riders like Ms. Muteba, the advertising strategist whose 30-minute commute
became a two-hour odyssey of packed cars and angry riders after a track fire in
July.

Though the number of passengers on the 1 line swelled temporarily that

morning because riders were avoiding the blocked A train, dozens of delays were
not attributed to the track fire. They were attributed to overcrowding, records
show.

Youre just kind of like, Its a lost cause, Ms. Muteba said. Its kind of like
beating a dead horse.

Agustin Armendariz and Vivian Wang contributed reporting. Doris Burke

contributed research.
 A version of this article appears in print on November 19, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition
with the headline: The Making of a Meltdown.

2017 The New York Times Company