F Train Service Has Improved, MTA Claims

Exasperated straphangers, checking their watches on the platform. It's a familiar sight to residents who take the F train from its express stop in Forest Hills.

Those poor, beleaguered commuters will soon be a thing of the past, however, if the MTA is accurate with its most recent assessment of the subway line New Yorkers love to hate.

F train service has seen some positive changes in the last year, according to a recent update from the MTA. The report confirms what a study by the said last month.

"Despite a burgeoning budget crisis leading to major cost reductions and widespread service cuts, performance of the F train improved significantly," the updated report read.

One year ago, the transit authority released a report on the sorry nature of F train service across the city. It was met with a resounding "yeah, we know already," from most city commuters, especially those in Queens and Brooklyn, who depend on F train service into Manhattan.

In the original report, the MTA admitted that the F train had been lagging behind "other routes in many performance measures and that the older parts of its infrastructure, some of which are 90 years old, can affect service reliability."

Now however, at the behest of Brooklyn state Sen. Daniel Squadron, the MTA has revisited the F train one year later, and the prognosis is much improved.
 According to MTA investigators, the F train is now arriving more often, breaking down less and has otherwise cleaned up its act.

The most recent report was compiled in October of this year, with numbers from the first six months of 2010. Comparing year-over-year statistics from July 2009 and July 2010, weekday F trains were on time just over 62 percent of the time in July of last year and jumped to over 78 percent in July of this year.

So much so, the MTA says, that the specially assembled task force created to address problems on the line is being disbanded.

Forest Hills State Sen. (D-Whitestone), said she is happy with the work that's been done so far, though it's an evolving process.

"The F Line has improved about 25 percent in weekday and weekend on-time performance," Stavisky said. "It still has work to do in some respects, and the MTA has made some good recommendations."