Photo: Alan Copson/The Travel L/REX USA.
As a New Yorker, you've encountered your fair share of transit delays — be it bus or subway. And, as a result, you've been late to work or social engagements by either a few minutes or almost an hour. This also means you've probably blamed your tardiness on the trains, even when it wasn't the MTA's fault. Well, the jig is officially up.
The MTA's Subway Delay Verification program gives riders a chance to get a note from the transit authority to confirm that their tardiness was not a product of poor planning, but of a subway complication outside of the riders' control. You know the drill: signal malfunctions, sick passengers, stray kittens. Though the service has been around for decades — it was initially designed for municipal workers on a time-clock system — requests for the late slip have nearly tripled in the last 18 months thanks to a new(ish) online platform. According to The New York Times, the MTA has issued more than 250,000 notes since the system hit the Internet in June 2010.
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So, how exactly do you get one of these hall passes? Just fill out the form with your subway line, as well as time and location of both your entry and exit from a station. Then, anywhere from hours to days later, you'll receive a note that says something to the effect of:
“There was a disruption in service, specifically signal trouble, sick customer, brakes in emergency and track circuit failure, which caused massive service delays, reroutes and/or trains to be discharged on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, B, C, D, F, J, L, M, N, Q and R lines. As a result, any one delay lasted up to [x number of] minutes.”
Think your boss will laugh in your face when you present him/her with a note? The Met, NYPD, and public schools are among the many employers receiving slips like this on a regular basis.
Now that the Subway Delay Verification system is in place, vague references to slow trains will no longer work for days that you simply overslept. Don't be surprised when your supervisor asks for written proof of your transit woes, now that it's easily available. Of course, if we had cell phone service underground, we could always just text or email the appropriate parties if we were running late. A girl can dream. (Gawker)