By Philip Newman
Queens registered the lowest swipe failure rate, excluding Staten Island, at 15.5 percent.”This is yet another example of the MTA's failure to provide its customers with adequate service,” Gotbaum said. “The MTA must reduce these swipe failures.”The data in the report, entitled “Stuck At the Turnstile: Failed Swipes Slow Down Subway Riders,” is based on all 2.5 billion MetroCard swipes made since the tokens were eliminated. In all, approximately 688 million swipes failed.The Transit Authority said there were many reasons for swipe failures, including buildup of grime in the turnstile slots that cause pop-ups of messages such as “Swipe Again,” “See Agent” and “Just Used.”But the Transit Authority also criticized the report as “improperly prepared and incomplete and an “attempt to gain exposure.”The report said the worst performing stations for swipe failure were in the Bronx and Brooklyn, where nearly a third of swipes failed.In Queens, the Far Rockaway-Mott station came in eighth worst in the city with 1,248,932 failed swipes out of 2,838,798 total swipes.”At the eighth-busiest entrance point in the subway system, Main Street-Flushing, swipes failed more than a third of the time (33.75 percent) – well above the citywide average,” the report said.For the report, Gotbaum's office used data from the New York City Transit Authority, which operates the subway system. The Transit Authority defines a failed swipe as any swipe that does not produce a complete transaction. “There is an unacceptably high rate of MetroCard swipe failures citywide,” the report said. “Swipes fail most often in the low-income neighborhoods like East New York, Harlem, the Rockaways, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Tremont, the South Bronx and southeast Queens,” the report said. The report recommended that the Transit Authority update its software to keep track of the different types of error messages at each turnstile/booth to better determine what maintenance is needed, examine the effects of its floating attendant program at the stations and decide if attendants should return to their booths at busy stations.Reach contributing writer Philip Newman by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 136.
