NYCT Track Cleanings

Data on scheduled and historical track cleanings for New York City subway stations.

Background

In the New York City Comptroller's May 2015 report, Audit Report on the New York City Transit Authority's Track Cleaning and Painting of the Subway Stations, one of the report's recommendations was that the MTA develop a more systematic approach to track cleanings.

In response, the MTA stated that they had used historical data about each station to create a system with six different categories of cleaning frequency.

In May 2015, WNYC submitted a FOIL request for the historical data involved in this calculation and the six categories established.

The data in this repository was received in September 2015.

Notes

cleaning-schedule.csv

• The six categories (Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Tri-Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Semi-Annual) reflect the scheduled cleaning frequency for April - October 2015. For example, the Greenpoint Avenue station is categorized as Bi-Weekly, so the goal was to clean it every two weeks.
• For the purposes of the six categories, a cleaning counts as a visit by a track cleaning crew. A visit by a vacuum train does not count.

cleanings-vacuum.csv and cleanings-manual.csv

• cleanings-manual.csv lists cleanings of the trackbed by a track cleaning crew.
• cleanings-vacuum.csv lists cleanings of the trackbed by a vacuum (VakTrak) train.
• These cleanings do not include cleanings of station entrances or platforms.
• The Track column lists specific tracks that were cleaned. The Tracks Done column lists the number of tracks clean. For example, if tracks V4 and V3 were cleaned, the Track column would list V3,V4 and the Tracks Done column would list 2.
• cleanings-manual.csv includes data on the quantity of debris removed and exact track footage covered.