New York State Senator Daniel Squadron recently commissioned a study of New York City's subway stations. 

Called "Beneath the District," it's a collection of data accumulated between July and August of this year ranking all of the stations' conditions in the 26th District (Lower Manhattan beneath Houston Street and Western Brooklyn) by how many of seven interior and exterior parameters, or "failures," they have.

Surveyors were on the lookout for specific conditions like ponding, rats, deteriorating walls, leaking water, graffiti, broken stairs and trash both inside stations and at the exterior, which includes everything up to the turn style, as in the lobby and entrance, etc. 

The results aren't fully shocking; we know the subway is a crap shoot a lot of the time. That's exactly why Squadron undertook the subway survey. 

Wondering which station scored the worst? It's the interior of the Canal Street (1), featuring a whopping 11 failures out of a possible 14.

Take a look at the graphic below running down about half of the Manhattan findings. 

It's clear that some stations have more of a problem with one failure than another, while some just fail across the board. Borough Hall (2/3), Canal Street (1) and Rector Street (R) each exhibited 10 or more failures.

via Beneath the District

Though, it looks like Chambers Street (A/C) mainly has issues with water, having failed at interior water leaking and interior ponding. 

One problematic statistic is this: 70% of stations surveyed had problems with interior trash accumulation. Moreover, 43% of stations exhibited exterior deteriorating walls. 

Yep, that's right: about half of the stations in the study are literally falling apart, and more than half are full of garbage. Something needs to be done.

via Beneath the District

The study cites notable improvements at the East Broadway (F), following joint efforts between Squadron and the community to pressure the MTA to repair a broken escalator, repaint the station, fix the stairs, and install Wi-Fi on the platform.

It's recommended that New Yorkers cooperate with their representatives to achieve a great, albeit gradual improvement in the state of our subways. The most important thing to be done is acquire full funding for the MTA Capital Plan, which is currently about $10 billion short.

Without that cash, there's no way we can keep the trash and rats out, no way to keep the walls and stairs from falling apart, no way to mop up all that water ponding inside and out of the subway, right? Right. 

This New Study Says It’ll Take 52 Years to Get Every NYC Subway Station in Good Condition…

[via Scribd]