Taken for a ride: can New York's decrepit subway system be saved?

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Delays, overcrowding, trash, rats and a chronic lack of money – New York’s subway is in disarray. Can an ambitious new blueprint fix things?

It was the summer of 2017, as New York’s subway trains groaned along on near-100-year-old equipment, throttled by a decades-long lack of funding, when things really came to a head.

In June, a train derailed in Harlem, injuring dozens. A month later, another derailed in Brooklyn. Elsewhere, footage went viral after a train broke down in the middle of a tunnel on a typically sweltering New York summer day. After almost an hour the temperature inside the carriages soared, causing, according to the New York Times, “some riders to panic and one woman to strip nearly naked”.

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