Watchdogs Ignored

City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s latest report, “The Human Cost of Subway Delays,” has no big surprises: Fury at the MTA is widespread in all five boroughs. But Stringer and state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli can at least say they warned us all.

The new study notes that 74 percent of straphangers have been late to work, appointments or job interviews thanks to increasing subway delays.

But the comptrollers don’t just point out the obvious: They were raising alarms long before the bottom fell out of the subway.

Since 2007, DiNapoli has issued 27 reports on the MTA’s operating and capital budgets as well as 59 audits of the agency. In the last three years, Stringer’s office has conducted nine MTA-related investigations and audits.

Back in 2015, Stringer noted that growing ridership and increasing delays made many riders “instinctively feel service is declining.” He also described the agency’s capital plan as “underfunded.”

At the time, the city was slated to get less than 12 percent of the cash the state was devoting to infrastructure from its multibillion-dollar legal-settlement windfall.

DiNapoli has also flagged shortfalls in the MTA’s proposed five-year capital plans. In a September 2015 report, he warned, “Signal systems are antiquated, ventilation plants are inadequate and subway stations are still in need of repair.”

But bark though the watchdogs did, the politicians, from Gov. Cuomo to the Legislature to Mayor de Blasio, stayed asleep.

Cuomo bears the chief responsibility, and not just because he has directed the MTA to focus on his priorities. But no leader has any excuse for being surprised by this crisis.

Then again, de Blasio ignored years of warnings from Stringer (and Public Advocate Tish James) about the Administration for Children’s Services, too. And Cuomo reduced DiNapoli’s oversight of SUNY spending.

Maybe they’re just not “watchdog people.”