NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- New York City’s aging subway cars are adding to headaches for commuters, resulting in a rise in major delays.
About one quarter of the city’s subway trains are at or beyond their 40-year useful life, according to a report that Thomas DiNapoli, the state’s comptroller, released Wednesday.
The system’s well-worn cars are the fastest rising cause of major incidents on the subway, which is when at least 50 trains are delayed, according to the report. Subway car failures resulting in such wide-spread delays nearly tripled in the first half of 2025 to 77 incidents, up from 27 during the same period the year earlier.
The problem highlights the need to replace the subway’s rolling stock with newer trains, DiNapoli said in the report. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city’s subway, bus and commuter rail lines, intends to do that. The MTA’s multi-year capital budget includes nearly $11 billion for 1,500 new subway cars and more than 500 commuter rail cars.
“Targeting problem areas like signals and issues with subway cars that add to delays can improve straphangers’ experience and boost ridership,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “Working with the Police Department, Fire Department, and Homeless Services can also help reduce incidents that cause delays.”
There were 385 major subway incidents in the first half of 2025, a nearly 5% increase from 368 such events in the first six months of last year, according to the report.
Straphangers have endured subway service disruptions this summer. Train signals from the 1930s have caused major delays, heavy rains have flooded stations and power disruptions are becoming more frequent. There were severe delays on multiple subway lines in late July because of power failures at the West 4th Street station.
Still, on-time performance — which is the percentage of train trips arriving within five minutes of their scheduled time — was 82.8% in July on a 12-month average. That’s better than the 75.4% on-time 12-month average in July 2019, before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to MTA data.
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