Queens subways - The Good, Bad and Filthy

Two of Queens’ subway lines are leaving riders just as hot as the platforms where they are stranded waiting for trains.
A public interest research group - The Straphangers Campaign - released its annual report on the state of the subways and rated the city’s 22 lines naming the W line the worst and the F line the dirtiest.
However, the No. 7 line was at the top of the rankings.
The group said the W, which runs from Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria to lower Manhattan, has the least amount of service, which is one of the reasons it was at the bottom. It can also be hard to find a seat on the train, difficult to hear the train announcements, and the cars break down at an alarming rate.
“The delays are the worst part,” said Ali Kahn, who travels the W line to work. “It’s terrible because it could cost me my job if I’m late four or five times.”
Kahn said that 90 percent of the time the trains take longer than they should. The only good part about the line was “it takes [Kahn] where he needs to go.”
Michele Stanifer who lives along the W line said she does not view the train as atrocious. Her biggest beef is the W subway can be “unpredictable.”
She gave this example. She will board one W train in the departing station and another will come in and leave before hers does. Stanifer, who works in Manhattan, said she plans an extra 30 minutes for travel not because of the W line, but because it is “public transit.”
The F line, which runs from 179th Street in Jamaica to Eastern Manhattan and then back through Brooklyn to Coney Island, was called the dirtiest train. The organization found only 68 percent of the cars had “light dirtiness.” The transit average was 87 percent.
“Overall, we document a subway system that is stalled, with slightly more breakdowns and no improvement in the number of irregular arrivals or subway car announcements,” Straphangers Campaign attorney Gene Russianoff said in the report.
However not all of the Queens subway lines were at the bottom of the rankings. The No. 7 train, which runs from Main Street - Flushing to Times Square, was rated as the third best.
“You don’t have to stand there long to see a train,” said Maryanne Brown, who rides the No. 7 train often. Brown said she rides several different lines and the No. 7 offers trains at the most frequent intervals of all those she travels on.
This Straphangers Campaign measured the trains during the second half of 2006 with much of the information separated by line for the first time. The entire report can be found at straphangers.org.