Survey Finds Conditions On Subway Platforms Need Improvement

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A group that advocates for New York City transit riders says conditions on subway platforms could be better.

A survey by the Straphangers Campaign found broken lighting fixtures, peeling paint, water damage and graffiti at many stations.

"Each station had different conditions that we had measured so it's hard to say the exact number of stations that were in bad shape but looking at it 79 percent of the station platforms had peeling paint so that's pretty bad considering riders would see that more than half of the time that the enter that station," organizer Jason Chin-Fatt told 1010 WINS.

EXTRA: Read The Full Survey (pdf)

Surveyors found rats at 11 percent of underground station platforms.

On the positive side, all the platforms had garbage cans and none of the cans were overflowing.

The survey was based on observations at 120 randomly selected subway stations. The number represents 28 percent of all the platforms in the system.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Charles Seaton says improving the appearance and cleanliness of the system's 468 stations is among the agency's top priorities.

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