Blame The Victim

The MTA wants you to know that you, the rider, are one of the biggest reasons its trains are delayed:

Subway riders behaving badly is a leading cause of train delays, transit statistics reveal.

More than 4,270 trains were thrown off their schedules last year because riders blocked subway car doors from closing in stations, according to Transit Authority statistics. It’s now the fifth-leading cause of delays, up from 20th place just five years earlier.

Unruly behavior as a cause for sluggish trains, meanwhile, spiked in December, moving into the top 10 reasons for tieups.

Transit officials said they couldn’t explain what appears to be an increase in boorish behavior on the rails.

“It’s really annoying,” door-hold victim Steve Cunning, 24, said yesterday at the Union Square subway station. “Just this morning at 51st St., this guy put his foot in the door to hold it for his friends, who were like a minute behind him.”

Cunning, a stockbroker from Manhattan, said most of his fellow riders meekly accepted the slowdown.

“He was gigantic, so there weren’t that many comments, and if there were, they were from way in the back,” he said.

Daryl Johnston, 46, who was waiting for an uptown No. 5 train at the Wall St. station, called for aggressive enforcement of TA rules against impeding the flow of trains.

“It’s wrong,” he said. “They should be given a ticket.”

The TA records a train as delayed if it arrives at its terminal station at the end of the line more than six minutes late.

Pot . . . kettle . . . pot . . . kettle.