What the F?

Big Apple subways are facing an uptick in delays this year — but the MTA appears more focused on the future, touting improvement projects that are decades away.

Weekday on-time performance slipped 1.7 percentage points systemwide, from 83.7% in the first half of 2025 to 82% in the first half of 2026, according to MTA data.

That means nearly one in five weekday trips failed to arrive on time and some lines were far worse.

The MTA counts a train as on time if it reaches its final stop no more than five minutes late without skipping any planned stations. Bloomberg via Getty Images

The B, N, 2 and F lines posted the lowest weekday on-time rates, at 71.6%, 72.7%, 73% and 73.1%.

Big Apple straphangers sounded off on Friday about their own experiences with the subway delays.

Sal Padellaro, 33, recalled he was once stuck on a stalled F train for minutes.

“I remember smoke barreling into the train car,” Padellaro told The Post while waiting for the A train at 50th Street.

Sal Padellaro, 33, said he was once trapped on an F-train during a 45 minute delay. NY Post

“It’s hard to be underground with no service that long,” he added. “My family, my boyfriend, everyone was trying to get a hold of me.”

Ana, who has lived in Manhattan and ridden the subway her whole life, said the 6 train is a drag. 

That line dropped from 85.3% to 76.3% on weekdays — a 9-point fall, the steepest of any line in the system.

“The 6 train will say two minutes and then it takes ten mins until the train comes. It’s crowded and people are pushing and shoving and fighting because they want to get in,” said Ana, who declined to give her last name.

Commuters wait for a C-train at 50th Street Friday. NY Post

She said she can be written up if she is late to her job in hospital billing. 

Delay verification notes that the MTA provides can take days to arrive and wouldn’t help her anyway, she griped.

Padellaro, too, said late trains throw off his workday.

“I have staff that report to me, and you have to work with a lot of different train schedules being late, which delays people getting to work, which can hurt business and certain operations,” he said.

The 7, J and L trains were the most reliable lines, arriving on time 89.1%, 86.4% and 85.4% of the time on weekdays.

The 42nd Street, Franklin Avenue and Rockaway Park shuttles all topped 96% for on-time performance. Each runs a short stretch of track with no other trains merging in.

The MTA counts a train as on time if it reaches its final stop no more than five minutes late without skipping any planned stations.

The subway’s on-time rate has largely hovered in the low-80s since 2021 — up from 63% in 2017 when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency.

The subway’s weekday on-time rate has largely hovered in the low-80s since 2021. data.ny.gov

MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said Wednesday the agency is working to improve delays.

“How quickly are our signaling teams responding? How quickly are we resolving issues that involve the police? Are we making sure that somebody gets to the sick passenger quickly so that service can resume?” Lieber said.

Lieber noted that snow storms in Febuary tanked on-time performace for the month, dipping to 79% systempwide.

The MTA also has plans to tackle infractuture projects to root out the source of many delays — but most of that work is decades out, according to a presentation officials gave at a board meeting this week.

“Our vision for 2050 will include fewer bottlenecks and better service,” one slide proudly proclaimed.

“I’ll be dead,” Padellaro joked. “That’s so unreasonable.”

The report, titled “Eliminating Bottlenecks: Speeding Up Your Ride,” lays out work to fix 25 chokepoints where trains from different lines merge and slow each other down.

A single delay at one of these spots can spread across several lines and snarl service citywide, the MTA said.

Most of the MTA’s chokepoint solutions will materialize between 2030 and 2050.

Even two Brooklyn chokepoint projects the agency has already started on won’t be finished by the time the next planned fare hike lands in March 2027.

“That sucks,” Ana said. “If it’s not good service why hike the price? It’s bad enough people aren’t making enough and the cost of everything is up.”

The report casts the chokepoints as a problem the MTA inherited.

“The New York City subway system—built over a century ago as three separate networks later stitched together—contains physical constraints that limit the frequent and reliable service that we strive to provide to riders,” the report said.

The MTA was put in charge of New York City’s subway system in the 1960s.