NYC subway had worst summer for service in years — but MTA boss insists it was ‘one of the best’

“Good” grief.

Massive subway meltdowns made this summer the most hellish for straphangers since 2018, data shows — but MTA honcho Janno Lieber still insisted Wednesday that the transit agency had a “good summer.”

Lieber pushed back on a Gothamist report showing this June and July had the most delay-causing major incidents in eight years, claiming a rebound in August salvaged the season.

“But if you count August, ladies and gentlemen, this has been one of the best summers in MTA history,” he proudly declared.

But even with Lieber’s supposedly game-saving August, data provided by MTA officials themselves shows the three summer months were still the worst since 2018 — when the city was just a year past the notorious “summer of hell.”

Data from this June, July and August shows 194 major incidents — defined as snafus that delay 50 or more trains.

That tally falls behind the 217 major incidents recorded in summer 2018, but is the most since then, according to data.

Last year, there were 192 such incidents, the data shows.

June and July this year had 69 and 70 major incidents, respectively, before they fell to 55 in August — an improvement, but not the overall victory portrayed by Lieber, the new data shows.

When asked if bad subway service should prompt MTA officials to rethink a coming hike in fares to $3, Lieber said no.

He asked New Yorkers to look on the bright side, arguing that it’s “way, way, way, way cheaper” to ride the subway than to own a car — and effectively asking them to ignore the MTA’s record-setting budget, major projects such as the long-awaited Second Avenue subway sucking up billions of dollars and transit officials imposing congestion pricing on Manhattan.

“Obviously, we think the summer overall was good,” he said. “We obviously had a tough couple days in July. It’s not a secret that when the power outages happened at West Fourth Street, people got and then the system got hit. But overall, service was good.”

Straphangers at the Lexington Avenue-59th Street station — where a smoking N train during Tuesday’s afternoon rush hour caused a power outage affecting thousands of straphangers — simply weren’t buying Lieber’s rosy view.

Michelle Sanchez, 25, who lives in the Bronx, said her hellish experience on the subway during a July heatwave alone justifies not raising the fare.

She was trapped with her 4-year-old son for 40 minutes underground in a 6 train that had no air conditioning.

“The train sucks,” she said.

“It was so hot. No air conditioner was on and then they took us back to 125th,” she said, meaning they had to turn around and go back the way they came after their sweltering wait.

Another Bronx straphanger, Bernal Middleton, 65, said she travels all the time from her home to Queens and Brooklyn, with her service dog Pupaya by her side.

The service isn’t good enough to justify even a 10-cent fare increase, she said.

“They are full of s–t,” she said. “They wanna raise the fare, but they don’t improve the service.”

An MTA spokesperson insisted on providing results from the agency’s customer satisfaction surveys.

The results show that MTA customer satisfaction has increased — from 47% in spring 2024 to 57% this spring.