The MTAās effort to cut down on subway āfires has sšo far failed.
Despite an expensive, yearlong effort to prevent a rash of blazes lišØke the one that plagued the system in 2017, the number of fires increased slightly over the past year.
According to statistics relš²eased Tuesday by the MTA, there were 963 fires išn the 12-month period ending July 1 ā an increase of three from the year-ago period.
The number of fires on the tracks ā which are most often caused when trains pass over piles of litter ā went down slightly from 698š¼ two years ago to 671 last year.
But thatās not much of a result, considering that the effort to stop fires was part of an $836 million Subway Action Plan intź¦roduced on July 25, 2017, in response to last summerās series of blazes.
One of the incidents was a fire on D-train tracks in Harlem that caused major delays and injured nine people on July 17, 2017, during what became known as commutersā āSummer of Hell.ā
As part of the plan, the Mš ŗTA started imploriź¦ng straphangers to discard food and wrappers in garbage cans, and the agency put several new track-vacuum trains into service.
āItās debris on the track bed,ā Carl Hamann, acting vice president of system safety for the MTA said at an agency transit-committee meeting. š¬āA lot of š¦it has to do with litter.ā
The agency also convinced the state Department of Environmental Conservation to raise litterbug fines from $50 to $100 and the NYPD saidź¦Æ it has issued 134 subway-littering summonses through June 30 ā up 74 percent from the 77 issued oź¦Æver the same period last year.
When the plan was announced, Chairman Joe Lhota briefly considered banning food consumption on thā±e subwšays, but decided against it.
MTA board members lament that the number of fires has not decreased, with one, Charles Moerdler, saying, āWhat are we doing about allowing food toš be served in the system?ā
An agency spokesman said that since the plan went into effect, ź§some 3,000 tons of debrisš¤Ŗ has been removed from the tracks ā and more are being implemented āthat will allow us to address litter more aggressively and drive the number of all fires down more significantly.ā
Part of the upcomingš¹ plans include the use of three new vacuum trains to clean the tracks and institutingš² a āgroup station managerā in charge of coordinating station maintenance.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore