Can you hear them now? The Straphangers Campaign just released their survey results on subway service announcements, which found that 55% of the time when service is disrupted announcements are either not made, too garbled to understand, or just totally inaccurate. And this is actually a 10% improvement from their last study in 2006!
Your best shot of hearing an announcement is on the 4/5/6, L, M or N trains—which got the best ratings; the worst announcement quality was found on the D, G and 7 trains. Oddly enough, the basic in-car announcements (transfer points, station names, etc) were found to be more than 80% clear and accurate throughout the system.
The Campaign's Jason Chin-Fatt points out, “Poor announcements can mean missed stops, longer trips and a lot more stress." Hear hear! But what's the MTA New York City Transit gonna do about it? NYCT's Paul Fleuranges told us this morning, "We are continuing the effort to improve communications with our customers in all areas. While the inclusion of digitized voice announcements on our newer subway car classes has made a huge difference in quality, we are also working to make certain that train crews keep customers informed when issues arise that may affect their trips."
The study was taken between February 3 and July 11 2009—check out how your line did after the jump.
