Drain-Clogging Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Not only do they start track fires but they cause floods as well:

From fires to floods, the MTA says the thousands of free newspapers distributed in the subways each day cause many of the problems that plague the system.

In February, officials blamed stray copies of amNewYork and Metro New York for a spike in track fires. Bundles of unread copies get blown onto tracks, they said.

Yesterday, flooding was added to the papers’ rap sheets.

The drain-clogging freebies were largely responsible for a massive flood in September 2004 that shut down much of the system, MTA board members said yesterday.

The MTA inspector general earlier this year cited the agency’s neglect of its plumbing. But MTA board member Barry Feinstein said the cause was a combination of near-biblical rainfall and litter clogging drains.

“We have bitterly complained for a long time about what we call the free newspapers,” Feinstein said after presenting a report to Chairman Peter Kalikow.

. . .

“The free newspapers are a problem to us,” Kalikow agreed. “We don’t mind them giving them out, we mind the way they are giving them out.”

In part because of the added trash from the papers, transit officials say they had to hire an additional 118 cleaners.

The free papers say the agency is making them a scapegoat for its own problems.

“I certainly hope it’s not us,” said Lori Rosen, a spokeswoman for Metro New York, noting that this has not been a problem at other transit systems around the world.

Each Metro now encourages its readers not to litter, she said.

Metro New York, for its part, reported the findings a little differently:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday blamed free newspapers for clogging subway drains, which contributed to the flooding of the city’s underground on Sept. 8, 2004, when three inches of rainfall shut down or delayed 18 train lines. Last February, the MTA attributed a surge in track fires to free papers.

But yesterday’s report contradicted the findings of the MTA inspector general’s office, which had faulted the transit authority for not reacting to the weather forecast. The inspector general also blamed “historical neglect” of system maintenance and a failure to keep drains clear.

. . .

Feinstein called the “25-year storm” an “act of God” but didn’t refute most of the previous report: “We did agree that debris on the track bed was a contributing factor to the level of flooding.”

That debris came from a variety of sources. “It was not simply newspapers, but that was the bulk of the problem,” Feinstein said. “There were also lots of MetroCards.”

Rider advocate Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said the subway’s real problem was a lack of cleaners.