If You Live Along The 6 Train, The Headline Is “The No. 6 Is Rated No. 1 In Straphangers’ Report”

But if you live in Queens, the headline really should be “N and W Trains Suck Eggs On A Regular Basis”:

For commuters on the jam-packed No. 6 line in Manhattan, it may come as a shock. For the third year in a row, the line has been rated the best in the subway system.

Then there are the slow and crowded N and W lines, where announcements tend to sound like crackly gibberish. They tie for the worst lines.

These are some of the findings in this year’s edition of a wide-ranging annual subway system report card issued by the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group. Released yesterday (and available at straphangers.org), the report relies on data for late 2005 from New York City Transit, the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the subways.

The Straphangers Campaign evaluates the various lines on how reliable the service is, the chances of finding a seat at peak times, cleanliness and the clarity of announcements.

. . .

The report yesterday found a wide variation in the frequency of scheduled service, which transit officials said was calibrated to reflect congestion and customer demand. During the morning rush, the report said, a train was scheduled to arrive at a station every 2 1/2 minutes on the No. 6 and No. 7 lines, while the intervals were as long as 10 minutes on the M and W lines.

Meanwhile, subway officials were on the defensive:

None of this sat well yesterday with New York City Transit, which said in a news release that the report demonstrated “a fundamental inability to understand how the New York City subway system actually works.”

Granted, but I think commuters fundamentally “get it” when three or four packed N or W trains blow by while you’re waiting at 36th Avenue in the morning . . .