If The NYC Subway Makes You Late For Work, The MTA Will Write You A Pass

Flickr/wwward0This is not what New Yorkers want to see in the morning.

The New York Times has uncovered some extremely helpful information for everyone who has ever been stuck on the L train in New York City - if a subway delay makes you late for work, the MTA will write you a late pass.

It's called a "Subway Delay Verification," and it's been available online since June 2010. Passengers provide information like their subway line, and the times and locations of their entries and exits within the past 90 days.

Of course, like many things the MTA does these days, it's not very fast. You could wait hours or maybe even days before the transit authority finally sends out its equivalent of a doctor's note. And the passes themselves can be a bit cryptic. Writes The Times' Matt Flegenheimer:

"There was a disruption in service, specifically signal trouble, sick customer, brakes in emergency and track circuit failure, which caused massive service delays, reroutes and/or trains to be discharged on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, B, C, D, F, J, L, M, N, Q and R lines," one recent response read, in part. "As a result, any one delay lasted up to 82 minutes."

Of course, smaller delays where a train is roughly five minutes late will not be recorded, even if that causes you to miss your transfer. So New Yorkers should still plan ahead as we move into winter and train delays become more common.