‘R’ Train Rated City’s Dirtiest for Second Year

The number of clean subway cars has declined since 2009, according to the 12th annual “Subway Shmutz” survey released Thursday by the watchdog group Straphangers Campaign.

And the shmutziest-rated line was the “R,” which traverses several west Brooklyn neighborhood.

Campaign surveyors rated 47 percent of subway cars as “clean” in a survey conducted in the fall of 2010, which was a statistical decline from 51 percent of cars rated clean in a survey conducted in the in the fall of 2009.

Interestingly, the worst-performing line, the most-improved line and the most-deteriorated line are all lines that run through Brooklyn.

As we’ve mentioned, the R had the smallest number of clean cars at 27 percent in this survey, down from 39 percent back in 2009. The R runs from Bay Ridge up the Fourth Avenue corridor through Sunset Park and Gowanus to Downtown Brooklyn. It then travels to Lower Manhattan, and finally into Midtown Manhattan and Queens.

One observer said that cars are rarely cleaned while they are resting at the end of the line on 95th Street, and that vagrants sometimes stay on the trains until they head back in the other direction.

In the 2009 survey, whose results were published last year, the Campaign also rated the R the dirtiest line. “It’s dirty and slow. On the weekends you have to wait a half-hour sometimes. It should be clean if they’re charging that much,” the Eagle quoted one Bay Ridge resident as saying at the time.

The most improved line in the survey was the M, going from 32 percent clean cars in 2009 to 61 percent in 2010. It was the one subway line that showed statistically significant improvement.

However, the route of the M also changed dramatically. It still goes through northern Brooklyn on Broadway and Myrtle Avenue. But instead of heading to southern Brooklyn and Bay Parkway, it now travels to (presumably cleaner) Queens Boulevard and Forest Hills.

The most deteriorated line in the Straphangers’ survey was the B, which fell from 61 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2010. In Brooklyn, the B travels over the Brighton Beach line through Flatbush, Midwood, the Kings Highway area, Marine Park, Brighton Beach and finally Coney Island.

The best performing line in the survey was the 7 (known to longtime New Yorkers as the Flushing Line), with 68 percent of its cars rated clean, up from 63 percent in 2009.

The 2010 budget contained cuts in cleaning staff, with car cleaners going down from 1,138 with 146 supervisors in 2009 to 1,030 cleaners and 123 supervisors in 2010, according to the Straphangers Campaign.

“Last year, we predicted ‘more cuts to come means more dirt for subway riders.’ And sadly that’s turned out to be true,” said Gene Russianoff, attorney for the group.

The car cleanliness survey is based on 2,000 observations of subway cars by the Straphangers Campaign between Sept. 14 and Nov. 20, 2010. The 2009 survey covered a nearly identical period.

Cars were rated on 20 lines for cleanliness of floors and seats, following MTA New York City Transit’s official standards for measuring car cleanliness. Cars were rated as clean if they were “basically dirt free” or had “light dirt” (“occasional ‘ground-in’ spots but generally clean”).

Cars were rated not clean if they were “moderately” dirty (“dingy floor, one or two sticky dry spots”) or heavily dirty (“Heavy dirt; any opened or spilled food, hazardous (e.g. rolling bottles), or malodorous conditions, sticky wet spots, any seats unusable due to unclean conditions”).

The survey did not rate litter.