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Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, September 5th. Here's your morning headlines from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: In New York, there's a growing alternative to hospitals for people seeking support during mental health crises. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has more on that.

Caroline Lewis: More small residential facilities are opening where people can stay for days or weeks during a mental health crisis and are free to come and go as they please. Statewide, there are now 43 such residences, up from eight in 2021. Some of these homes rely primarily on peer counselors, who have their own experiences with mental illness. A 2018 study found these peer-led programs reduced hospitalizations and healthcare costs. A newer crisis residence model also includes nurses and psychiatrists, but there are limitations. These centers can't take patients who pose a danger to themselves or others.

Michael Hill: An 18-year-old is facing federal charges in the East Harlem shooting that killed a 69-year-old woman last week. Prosecutors say Faisil McCants robbed a man at gunpoint, then fired 15 rounds from a machine gun down a city street, hitting and killing Robin Wright, who was a bystander, using her walker on the sidewalk. Prosecutors have filed federal robbery and gun charges against McCants. The NYPD says he's also facing murder and weapons charges. Authorities are still looking, they say, for two co-conspirators. McCants' attorney information was not immediately available.

New York City's annual LGBTQ+ film festival, known as NewFest, is giving Arizonans free access to screenings after a queer film festival in Phoenix shut down last month. Paradise Valley Community College, which hosted the Desperado Film Festival in Arizona, cancelled it this year, citing federal orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. NewFest Executive Director David Hatkoff says offering free access is about more than movies.

David Hatkoff: By existing, just by telling our stories, just by raising our voices, just by gathering together in communities, that in and of itself is resistance.

Michael Hill: Arizona residents will get complimentary access to a selection of NewFest 130 films when the festival runs from October 9th to the 21st in New York. Organizers will announce the line-up next Wednesday. 69 and mostly cloudy, going up to 83 today, and mostly sunny skies with a light wind.

Janae Pierre: It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On The Way, covering all things transportation. That's after the break.

Sean Carlson: I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It's time for On The Way, our weekly segment on All Things Considered. Breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us, WNYC's transportation reporters, Stephen Nessen and Ramsey Khalifeh. New Yorkers who recently rode the subway know that things have not really been great recently out there with all the problems happening. Ramsey, you've been looking into the numbers for June and July. Can you just walk us through what you found?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Yes, I looked at three different data points to understand some of the pain riders have been experiencing so far this summer after big infrastructure failures. You remember the power outages at West 4th Street. You can remember that there was the flooding that really put the 1, 2, and 3 trains in some trouble. One data point I focus on was major incidents. The MTA defines as when the subway experiences 50 or more delays from an incident.

Riders can imagine how disruptive that is when your entire train line is down. You're stuck at a station for more than 20 minutes, or worse, maybe stuck inside a tunnel. There were the most major incidents in June and July this year, since June and July of 2018. The MTA says this was due to those few incidents, the flooding, the power outages, and that it really skewed the data. There's also all the delays that we found because of infrastructure or equipment failures. Think aging electric and signal systems.

Those were the highest in July since the MTA started sharing this data five years ago, but the MTA points to their on-time performance metric, basically how often a train gets to its destination on time within a certain window, typically five minutes. That number is relatively high, and it's about to be the same as last summer. The MTA doesn't think it's a fair picture just to look at the June and July data, but they're yet to share their major incidents and other delay data information for August. I'm sure we'll be giving it a look once that's up.

Sean Carlson: Totally.

Stephen Nessen: It is always tricky to parse historic subway metrics. That's because the goalposts have changed somewhat over the years. While the MTA does include a lot more data online now, it's also adjusted schedules over the years. It's reduced some service online, increased on others, which makes taking a historic look tricky. There's also electronic signals on some lines, so it's not all apples-to-apples comparisons across subway lines. Like Ramsey was saying, the metrics focused on the rider's experience, like how long you wait for a train, how long your trip is.

Most people don't ride end to end, so that on-time performance number doesn't mean a lot to most riders. Even still, all of those numbers took a hit this summer. A lot of the reasons, like Ramsey mentioned, are about the infrastructure being beyond its useful life, the phrase the MTA likes to use. The agency is focused on upgrading it, improving the electric, the signals, adding more flood protection. When we get those heavy rains, it's not a shutdown of the system. The majority of the current $65 billion capital plan is going to upgrade those items. Again, those aren't things that will improve overnight. It may take years to see the benefits.

Sean Carlson: Okay. Well, we're being hard on the subways, but let's move over to the city's bus lines, which got a report card today from Comptroller Brad Lander. Not great. Stephen, what is the report card, and what does it mean for riders?

Stephen Nessen: I know. School just started, and report cards are already out. The comptroller looked at bus speeds, on-time performance, frequency of delays, and found that more than half of the city's 332 bus lines got a D or an F. Bad grade.

Sean Carlson: Oof, yes.

Stephen Nessen: The borough with the worst grades was Manhattan, where 73% of buses failed to get better than a D. Lander blames mostly bad traffic for that. He did give at least one bus in each borough an A. Congrats. Kudos to the Q60, runs from LaGuardia to Harlem.

Sean Carlson: Nice.

Stephen Nessen: The B31 from Gerritsen Beach to Midwood in Brooklyn, BX29 in the Bronx, and Q35 in Queens, two Staten Island buses as well. Lander isn't just doing this for sport. He wants the MTA to study the performance on each line, and make it a point for them to increase the performance line by line. Maybe make small improvements each year to the worst lines, something that the public can track and see.

The MTA just said it broadly agrees with Lander, and it noted that it's been doing these borough bus route redesigns, redesigning the bus routes in each borough for the first time ever. That could help. Both Lander and the MTA agree, bus priority lanes, those lanes just for buses, help. Those cameras that ticket vehicles that park in bus lanes should speed up service. Lander says one thing the MTA could do that would speed up buses right now is allow all-door boarding. That is tapping your OMNY card at the back or the front of the bus. Right now, you can only do that on Select Bus Service buses, but not local buses.

Ramsey Khalifeh: That's because fare evasion on buses is top of mind for MTA officials who say, at one point, it's reached nearly 50% of all riders not paying their fare. They've made efforts to curb this problem, including adding MTA agents on select routes every week to check to see people's tickets. That's in coordination with the NYPD, who can issue summonses, a fine if a rider doesn't pay the fare. For local buses, the agency doesn't typically open up their back door unless commuters are getting off. With that enforcement blitz, fare evasion numbers are still stubbornly high. For all buses, it's about 44% last quarter. It's especially high on those SBS buses, which have what exactly? Rear-door boarding.

Stephen Nessen: Of course, the other thing Lander says that could speed up buses is just to not collect fares at all. An idea that leading mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is calling for, free buses for everyone, which Lander supports.

Sean Carlson: Okay, moving on here. Stephen, you stopped by an exhibit at Grand Central Terminal. It's put on by the Transit Museum. It features New Yorker cartoons and covers about the subway system. What did you think? What are your takeaways?

Stephen Nessen: Well, first of all, it was really fun. The curator did an amazing job breaking it up into different sections. There's commuter behavior, critters on the subway, the waiting experience, service changes, things we've all experienced. She reviewed 500 New Yorker cartoons from the last 100 years and winnowed it down to maybe the best two dozen or so. It really captures the experience of being on the subway system.

They have one from the very first issue of the magazine from 1925, where a guy is wiping the grime off a subway car next to a sign that says, "Please help us keep the L and subway clean." I think he's just cleaning it so he could see where his stop is. The irony is there, The New Yorker humor, even from the very beginning. I chatted with one of The New Yorker cartoonists, Ellis Rosen, who came by. His work is featured in the show. He has one of two cowboys standing on the platform. I don't know if you've seen this. They're both standing. One's on the platform, one's in the open door of a train, and the caption says, "You ain't getting on this train till I get off first."

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Sean Carlson: Okay. All right.

Stephen Nessen: I was curious how Rosen came up with this cartoon. This is what he said.

Ellis Rosen: It's not a law. It should be a law. In my family, anyway, this is a very important subway etiquette rule that should be enforced, in my opinion, through cowboy, dueling, whatever you call that. Normally, you're making fun of etiquette, but in this case, I take this very seriously, so couldn't make fun of it, had to just make fun of the offenders.

Stephen Nessen: The exhibit runs through October. Check it out.

Sean Carlson: Very cool. All right. Every week in our On The Way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious community. This one is from Barbara in Manhattan, who asks, "Officials are still touting the success of congestion pricing, but it seems to me that the battle days are coming back a little. Are there any recent stats, or are they still using the early numbers?"

Ramsey Khalifeh: Barbara, if you're referring to the bad old days as Manhattan's traffic before congestion pricing, you might have been noticing how busy the city gets during the peak summer tourist seasons in June, July, and August. By the latest metrics, the congestion pricing program is actually still achieving its goal. That data that we have shows that vehicles traveling into the central business district, Manhattan below 60th Street, is down 12% compared to those two months combined last year.

There's also more riders on the subways. Average daily subway ridership for June, July, and August was higher this summer than the last summer. It's helpful to take maybe summer holidays into account when New Yorkers are maybe getting in cars, commuting outside the city to nearby states or towns for the holidays could mean heavier congestion in the tunnels and on bridges leaving Manhattan.

Sean Carlson: All right, time to get out of here. Thanks to Barbara for the question. Thanks to WNYC's Ramsey Khalifeh and Stephen Nessen. You can stay in the know on all things transit, or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamist.com/ontheway. Partners, thanks so much.

Stephen Nessen: Thanks, partner. [chuckles]

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Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC NOW from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.

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