It’ll cost double to be a slob on the subway beginning next week, when the state jacks up littering fines — the latest salvo in the battle against delay-causing trash on the tracks.
Fines will jump from $50 to $100, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday night, and even though the fine is going up statewide, the increase is aimed squarely at subway riders, he said.
“There are tons of trash being left in the system,” Cuomo said. “This is an issue of public safety, it’s not just a nuisance.”
Along with raising fines, increasing enforcement will also help keep down track fires, Cuomo said.
That’s because fewer tickets means more track fires. In 2012, cops handed out 669 tickets for littering and there were 261 track fires that year, records show. So far this year, cops have issued fewer than 100 tickets and there have been 470 track fires.
Having the Department of Environmental Conservation raise the littering fine is part of a new strategy of getting as many state agencies as possible involved in fixing the subways, the governor said. Earlier this summer, the state Public Service Commission stepped in and ordered Con Edison to work on massive repairs on electrical services within the subway system.
Electrical outages, flooding and fires account for about 63 percent of all major delays in the subway system, Cuomo noted.
Trash not only can catch fire when trains pass over it, but the refuse can clog up the drains and vents within the system, causing tracks to flood.
If the water level reaches the electrified third rail, the power has to be shut off. Track and signal issues caused by water is the second-largest cause of delays in the system, said Cuomo.
Delays caused by standing water increased by 56 percent in the last six months compared to the same period a year earlier.
On a dry day, the subway system’s sump pumps process 13 million gallons of water.
The MTA showed off its new trash vacuuming system, which consists of vacuum trains and portable high-power vacuums.
The agency also plans to seal more than 4,000 leaks, clean street grates and unclog track drains, officials said.
Since the MTA started using the new vacuums this summer, workers have removed 2.3 million pounds of trash from the system. A crew hauled away 70,000 pounds of trash at the Carroll Street station in Brooklyn in just one day.