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More than a third of all long subway delays are caused signal problems, according to an analysis of 3,000 text alerts sent by the NY MTA last year.

Subway ridership rose 2.3 percent in 2011. New Yorkers and city visitors took 1.64 billion trips, the most in any year since 1950.

The New York City subway recorded 1.6 billion rides in 2011 — the system's highest number since 1950.

Wednesday was a big day for Bach enthusiast Dale Henderson, it being J.S. Bach's 327th birthday as well as the second “Bach in the Subways Day." Watch a slideshow of the event as it played out.

The MTA released its new Arts for Transit app on Thursday, which has background information and photos of each one of the 236 permanent artworks in the New York City transit system. See a slideshow of some of our favorite works of underground subway art included in the app here.

This week’s Please Explain takes a look at something familiar (yet still mysterious) to every New Yorker: the subway. John Tauranac, architecural historian and designer of city and transit maps, and Andrew Sparberg, former Long Island Railroad manager and director of the railroad technology program at Technical Career Insitutes, talk about how the subway was built and how it transformed the metropolitan area.

New York City's new transit chief said he opposes a bill that would ban food on the subways despite a rat infestation in the system — but backpedaled Tuesday on remarks he made about the sponsor of the bill.

Late-night riders of the No. 4, 5 and 6 train have their subway back starting Friday after the MTA shut it down overnight for four days this week.

Jim O'Grady, WNYC's transit reporter, talks about New York City's abandoned subway stations.

Bruce Davidson, legendary photographer, discusses the 25th Anniversary of his collection, Subway, which has just been re-released and reviews our listener-submitted subway shots. 

Carl Bazil, professor of clinical neurology and director of the Division of Epilepsy and Sleep at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, talks about his subway sleeping experiment as documented by Christine Haughney for the New York Times. 

In the city that never sleeps, the subways soon will.

In this 1964 episode of Around New York, the inimitable Tony Schwartz presents an aural portrait of New York City’s subway.  

New York City Transit suffered its third derailment in six months on October 24, when two train cars jumped the tracks. It's the kind of major breakdown that tends to make riders wonder, could the subway be sliding backward toward the dark days of the 1980s?

The MTA unveiled on Monday a new program meant to lower the number of rats in the subway by removing trash from stations.

Nineteen people were evacuated Monday morning after two cars of an uptown No. 6 train derailed between Brooklyn Bridge and Canal Street, an MTA spokesman said. No one was injured.

A controversial plan by the MTA to charge a dollar for a new Metrocard has been put off until at least until January. Programming Metrocard vending machines to charge the fee has turned out to be harder than the authority expected.

Legendary photographer Bruce Davidson discusses the 25th anniversary of his collection Subway, which has just been re-released. Plus, he discusses the submissions to our listener subway photo project - including those from Vesna Gajic, Olga Kasatkina, and Ernest Herman.

EXHIBIT: Aperture Gallery presents Bruce Davidson: Subway | On view: Monday, October 3-Saturday, October 29, 2011 | Info and Directions»»

There is so much going on this week, I don't even know where to begin -- from crafty modernism at MAD to the scratchy-pop paintings of Gary Panter in Chelsea to '90s graphic novels and '80s subway photos. New York has got it going on this week. Here's what we've got in the hopper.

Two subway passengers were struck by trains during the Monday morning commute.