Lawmakers Toured the Subway to Hear Commuters’ Complaints. They Got an Earful.

Sheryl Acevedo’s complaint was about an escalator at the East Broadway subway stop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that rarely seems to work. That makes life difficult for Ms. Acevedo, 61, and her husband, Raymond, 63, a retired ironworker who uses a walker and travels to the neighborhood for therapy sessions.

“We’re struggling,” Ms. Acevedo said as she stood inside the East Broadway stop. “I have to carry his walker. I just had surgery on my arm, and he had two hips replacements. It’s really toll taking. The escalator works, then it doesn’t work.”

In this summer of commuting discontent, Ms. Acevedo’s story was just one of dozens that two New York lawmakers fielded on Thursday as they embarked on what they described as a two-day listening tour of the aging subway, which has been plagued by overcrowding and constant disruptions.

The two lawmakers, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx and Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez of Manhattan, are both Democrats who lead committees that oversee the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the subway.

Over the course of 12 hours on Thursday, the two men stopped at 12 stations, starting at Van Cortlandt Park-242nd Street on the 1 line in the Bronx and ending at Times Square. The goal was to give commuters a chance to vent, though at times their ride took on more of a public-relations campaign given the number of journalists tagging along. (It also began with a classic MetroCard flub by Mr. Dinowitz, who took two swipes to pass through a turnstile.)

Still, as Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Dinowitz made their way through the Bronx and Manhattan, some common and familiar themes emerged: increasing delays, creaky infrastructure, dirty stations and a lack of access for people with disabilities.

“We have elevators that frequently don’t work,” Dr. Lee Goldman, dean of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, told reporters at the 168th Street station in northern Manhattan, which has stops for the 1, A and C lines.

“Every day, hundreds of people come here for medical care,” Dr. Goldman added, and for “people with disabilities, mothers with babies — this subway station is an embarrassment.”

Jeanne Mullgrav, who rides the subway from 242nd Street to Lower Manhattan during her commute from Yonkers, told the lawmakers that her trip frequently became snarled between Times Square and Chambers Street. Mr. Dinowitz at one point suggested that it should take commuters no longer than an hour to travel between 242nd Street and Chambers Streets — an assertion that seemed to take Ms. Mullgrav aback.

“But it’s so few miles,” interjected Ms. Mullgrav, who said the train should go express. “Nowhere else in the country do you travel so few miles and it takes so long.”

One rider, who spoke with officials at the 125th Street station on the IND Eighth Avenue line in Harlem, described the crowded subway and platforms as being “packed like sardines.”

The fifth stop on Thursday’s tour took lawmakers to the J train line at the Chambers Street station, where they were greeted by chipped paint, the acrid smell of urine and trash floating on puddles of murky water on the train tracks.

More than 35 transit advocates and volunteers, who accompanied the lawmakers, scattered across steamy subway platforms with white paper and clipboards, sometimes dripping with sweat as they surveyed riders. Some of the questions were: What is your biggest issue with the subway system? If delayed, how long is the delay on average? When was the last time you were late to work or an appointment due to the subway?

The responses from riders will be included as part of a City Council oversight hearing on the M.T.A. scheduled for Tuesday.

“They are the ones with the more legitimate voices on how we should be able to make this system a 21st-century one,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who is chairman of the Council’s transportation committee.

Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Dinowitz, who were joined by other city and state lawmakers at certain stops, sometimes spent more time talking to reporters than speaking with riders, though a spokesman for Mr. Rodriguez said volunteers had surveyed more than 1,000 riders on Thursday.

Despite the public feuding between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over funding to address problems on the subway, Mr. Dinowitz said the city and state needed to work together given the magnitude of the challenge.

“We don’t want to see finger pointing and blaming each other,” Mr. Dinowitz said. “The problems with our mass transit system have been building up for a long time because of under investment.”

Joseph J. Lhota, the recently appointed chairman of the M.T.A., has proposed an $800 million emergency rescue plan to overhaul the subway system, including improving its antiquated signal system and accelerating repairs of subway cars.

In response to the lawmakers’ tour, Shams Tarek, a spokesman for the M.T.A., said: “We understand riders are frustrated — and they have every right to be. That’s why Chairman Lhota laid out an aggressive plan to take immediate action to stabilize and modernize the system.”

On Friday, the second day of the tour, the ride carried lawmakers through Queens and Brooklyn, with a brief detour to Staten Island to travel on the Staten Island Railroad.

Ms. Acevedo said that the skirmishing between Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo was not helping the lives of commuters and that though the merits of Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Dinowitz’s subway travels were debatable, she was willing to give them some credit for at least “trying to do something to help improve’’ the subway.