NEW YORK — The 42nd Street S and Rockaway Park S shuttle grades have been tabulated.
Trends may be difficult to determine due to the small size of customer responses. In 2007, there were 380 responses for the 42nd Street shuttle and 132 responses for Rockaway Park shuttle. In 2008, there were only 146 responses for 42nd Street and 60 responses for Rockaway Park.
The 42nd Street shuttle travels only one stop in the east-west direction between Times Square and Grand Central stations. Keeping the small sample size in mind, the grade for “Overall Performance” for the 42nd Street shuttle declined from a “B -” in 2007 to a “C ” in 2008.
While sixteen of the twenty-one categories retained the same grade, the remaining five declined by one level: “Adequate room on board at rush hour,” “Cleanliness of subway cars,” “Train announcements that are informative,” “Lack of graffiti in stations” and “Availability of MetroCard Vending Machines.”
The top three priorities remain unchanged. Customers are concerned about “Adequate room on board at rush hour,” “Reasonable wait times for trains,” and “Cleanliness of stations.” The highest grade of “B” was for “Minimal delays during trips.”
The Rockaway Park shuttle travels from Broad Channel to Rockaway Park-Beach 116th Street, serving five stations. The “Overall performance” index is 78 percent, up from 69 percent in 2007 and the “Overall performance” grade is up to “C” from “D .” Of the twenty-one categories, twenty have seen an improvement from 2007. The highest grade of “B -” was for “Ease of use of subway turnstiles” and “Availability of MetroCard Vending Machines.”
The two top priorities for customers of the Rockaway Park shuttle remain unchanged: “Reasonable wait times for trains” and “Minimal delays during trips.” The third priority is now “Adequate room on board at rush hour,” instead of “Cleanliness of stations.”
Other areas of improvement on the Rockaway Park shuttle by at least one level include: sense of security in both trains and stations, working elevators and escalators in stations, signs in subway cars and stations that help riders find their way, cleanliness of stations and subway cars and the courtesy and helpfulness of station personnel.
