Metro

Subway delays spiked over past 2 years: study

Subway delays have spiked over the past two years, fueled by disruptions on the F and L lines, according to a new analysis of MTA electronic alerts to riders.

Last year, there were almost 4,000 disruptions that affected service — up 35 percent from 2011’s 2,967 delays, the Straphangers Campaign said.

“These are significant delays in service,” said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Campaign. “I didn’t expect we would find such a big increase in delay alerts. It’s a warning sign.”

F train riders, who suffered massive disruptions during a derailment in Queens on Friday, endured a whopping 8 percent of the delays last year.

“F train riders who complain about the quality of service have real beef,” said Russianoff.

L train riders received 183 alerts, a 91 percent jump from 2011.

J and Z riders had the smoothest commutes, with only 53 interruptions to their trips last year.

Mechanical malfunctions were responsible for 35 percent of the service interruptions, followed by signal problems, which caused 31 percent.

Almost half of the delays were in Manhattan, even though the borough has slightly less than a third of the stations.

The group did not include police investigations in the transit system, which can delay service, and sick passengers in their analysis, since they are out of the MTA’s control.

But police activity and ill riders caused an additional 1,958 delays last year.

The MTA alerts riders to service changes for any incident that disrupts service for 8 minutes and up through e-mails and text messages. The alert system launched in 2008 and has about 105,000 subscribers for subway and bus alerts.

Cate Contino, also of the Campaign, said the MTA has improved in giving more details in the alerts about what causes delays.

An MTA spokesman said the text and e-mail alerts were not an accurate way to measure performance, and said wait times between trains for customers had remained flat since 2011.

He also said Sandy-related damage was still affecting service reliability.

“We ask for our customer’s patience as we do the necessary work to rebuild and keep the system in a state of good repair,” said Kevin Ortiz.