We’ve long heard that subways run on some sort of actual schedule, similar to commuter trains. Like, the 6 train is due in at 9:15, and if you miss that one, the next one is due in at 9:20, or something like that.

We always kind of chalked that up to an urban myth, like the Samaritan who grabbed the stray puppy off the mean streets of Gotham, only to have it turn out to be a giant rat, or the one about the family who was robbed of everything but their camera and (tainted) toothbrushes.

Well, the MTA actually makes these subways schedules available online (our apologies to everyone who’s known this since the ’60s). Here’s the link.

Back to that 6 train–if it seems like she’s pulling into Grand Central every three minutes or so during rush hour, she is, at least theoretically. The 6 is scheduled to arrive at 9:04, then 9:07, then 9:10, and on, until it lags to every four minutes at 9:23.

Good luck downloading the sked to your Blackberry–it’s a pdf file.

When MTA CEO Elliot Sander gave his “state of the MTA” address just a few weeks ago, he spoke of increasing service on 11 subway lines and adding trains and cars on the LIRR and Metro-North, among other projects totaling some $30 million dollars.

While his trip to the podium wasn’t quite as ignominious as another Elliot S’s around the same time, those improvements appear to be nothing but a pipe dream. After Mayor Bloomberg urged the MTA to recheck its finances, the Authority decided it didn’t have the funds for the improvements.

Which is a wee bit bogus, as the hike in fares and tolls was sold as a way to improve the rider experience. In short, we get the fare hike without the improvements.

The shortfall was chiefly caused by a sharp drop in taxes from real estate transactions, transportation authority officials said. They held out hope that if finances improve by the summer, they could go ahead with the improvements, writes the NY Times.

Comments Straphangers Campaign mouthpiece Gene Russianoff to the Times, “They obviously couldn’t deliver on the promises they made at the time the fare went up, and that’s unfortunate, and it will make people very skeptical about future announcements.”

SecondAvenueSagas calls it “The MTA’s Worst Monday Ever.”

“…acknowledging this reality so soon after the fare hike is a terrible public relations move by the MTA,” SAS writes. “…This announcement hits the MTA at its weakest point. The agency, long viewed with skepticism by New Yorkers, has lost any shred of credibility when it needs it the most. Now, the public will not believe that the MTA ever planned to deliver the promised service upgrades. The authority simply used those upgrades to sell the public on a fare hike.”

What a horrific mess.  

The latest from MTA:

Service on the Harlem, Hudson, and New Haven lines has been restored into and out of Grand Central Terminal.

Customers should expect extensive delays (of up to 90 minutes) and crowded conditions on trains as we resume service. Please be sure to listen for announcements in Grand Central Terminal and at outlying stations in the event of service changes.

From the MTA:

Hudson , Harlem and New Haven Line train service has been temporarily suspended into and out of Grand Central Terminal because of a building collapse in the vicinity of 124 Street and Park Avenue . 

We will continue to update you as the situation changes.

Our Metro-North blogging brethren StationStops.com has retooled its schedules page, putting all the stations on a single screen. In short, you can do with one click on StationStops what takes about a half-dozen clicks and some scrolling on the MTA page, and as StationStops points out, you can’t bookmark the MTA Schedules page.

The new page also offers easy access to the real-time Metro-North Big Board, which the MTA site makes a point of burying.

Ambitious MTA plans for a Long Island Railroad link to Grand Central, the westward expansion of the 7 train and a sparkling, glass-domed subway station known as an “oculus” are in jeopardy, according to William Neuman in today’s NY Times.

Cost overruns climbing into the billions are given as the reason. “We’re just in the middle of a construction inflation crisis,” MTA chairman Dale Hemmerdinger told the Times. (And we thought the construction industry was sitting on its ass until the subprime crisis sorts itself out…shows what we know!)

The combined budget for the projects is $12.5 billion.

The aforementioned oculus is to be located at Fulton Street, down by Ground Zero. Neuman describes it as “a project to modernize and unravel a spaghetti bowl of interlinked subway stations” that’s to be “topped by an eye-grabbing glass and steel domelike structure….which would direct natural light into the underground.”

Presumably, the new scaled-down plans will eschew the underground natural light, so straphangers will continue to look like the gray-hued ghouls they do today.

For much, much, much, much, much more detail on the topic, including Perez Hilton-esque teleprompter scrawlings, check out SecondAvenueSagas.

Our subway-obsessed friends at SecondAvenueSagas put the new MTA mobile Website to the test, and find mixed results. The new platform is geared toward giving you train service alerts, departures and maps on your Blackberry, but SecondAve. says an over-reliance on PDFs seriously hampers its functionality.

Subway stations will be wired for cellphone use in the coming years, but the actual trains will not. The Metropolitan Transit Authority sold the job to Transit Wireless for almost $47 million, and the wiring will begin at six stations in two years. Over the course of the next decade, all 277 stations in the system will be wired for cell use.

Oddly, there appears to be a lower-west-side bias to the initial recipients of the wiring. The first six stations to get hooked up will be 23rd and 8th, 14th and 8th, 14th and 7th, 14th and 6th, and then both 8th Ave. and 6th Ave. on the L line.

The lack of communication during the recent subway flooding debacle precipitated, so to speak, the MTA’s decision.

Straphangers’ reactions were mixed in the local media. “I think it’s going to be more stressful, especially in the morning when you’re just trying to get with it,” 7 rider Ellie Rodriguez told AM NY. “People don’t have a concept of manners or rudeness when it comes to cell phones.”

MTA chairman Peter Kalikow, meanwhile, told the NY Times the “inconvenience quotient” would be low, as you can (almost) always scuttle off to a different part of the platform.

“Inconvenience quotient.” I like that. I may just take a moment to see how all the people, places and things in my life rank in terms of my inconvenience quotient.

We’re not thrilled about the MTA’s 5:59 rule, which says that a train is on time if it lumbers into the station within five minutes and 59 seconds of when it’s supposed to. And we don’t love the fact that the MTA trumpets its dubious 98% “on time” scores each month in Mileposts.

What if everyone decided it was OK to be six minutes late? What if Heroes started six minutes after you’d taken a seat and popped open a beer? How would you feel? What if you decided to be six minutes late for the train–would it wait for you?

Anyway, we’re putting the train to the test in the month of July. Instead of giving Metro-North a 5:59 cushion, we’re giving it a 59-second cushion. So, as long as the train that’s due in at 9:05 pulls in before the little hand gets to :06, it’s on-time. (We’ll synchronize our watch to the “Official U.S. Time” website.

We’ll be tabulating the scores, and seeing how they stack up against the scores the MTA gives itself.

Based on eight months of daily riding, our offhand guess is that the train will be on-time, according to our criterion, around 15% of the time.

As of Monday, it’s game on.

The subway overcrowding problem is “scary,” according to MTA president Howard Roberts in the Times yesterday. The MTA is several years from building a solution to the problem, so the ever-expanding pool of subway riders will just have to deal.

“It’s bad news,” Roberts said. “There’s no room at the inn.”

Making matters worse is Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to charge motorists for driving into Manhattan. And if you think that will only affect the subway situation, look for substantially more riders on the commuter trains as well.

Reporter William Neuman unearthed this subway tidbit: Transit agency guidelines state that each rider is entitled to a three-square foot space to stand in. Mention that next time someone’s armpit has snuck into your cocoon.

The Times also shows which subways are the most tardy. The 4 came in last with 83% on time performance, while the 5 wasn’t much better (87%).

At the other end of the spectrum, the J-M-Z line clocked in at 99% on time.