The MTA on Monday announced new metrics for subway performance that will allow riders to track how often a train is late, how much precious above-ground life is snatched away thanks to train traffic and other disruptions, and how often the subway melts down completely.

Previously, the MTA only measured wait assessment and terminal-to-terminal performance, metrics it has acknowledged are flawed. Wait assessment tracks how often a train arrives at the station on schedule, according to the NY Times, but doesn't distinguish between a train that's one minute late, or 45 minutes late. Terminal-to-terminal performance measures whether trains arrive at their final stop on time, a largely useless data point as most straphangers don't ride the train from end to end.

The old metrics focused on "trains, not people," said MTA Operations Chief Peter Cafiero during his presentation to the MTA Board Monday. While the new dashboard is intended to give riders more information geared towards their overall experience, all the way down to station cleanliness.

The public dashboard, which will go live Wednesday on the MTA's website, with a cellphone app to follow, was developed at the urging of MTA chairman Joe Lhota. At the height of a summer riddled with nightmare commutes, Lhota wrote that he expected the new metrics to be "a report card to the public on our progress."

A "major incidents" tab—tracking occurrences that delay 50 trains or more—will tally incidents by cause, including track issues, signal issues, and delays caused by a person on the track bed. A "station environment" section will use a passenger environment survey to assess station and train car cleanliness.

"The whole point is to make the next month better than the prior month," Lhota said. Most of the measurements can be broken down by borough, car class, or route. Measurements can also be organized by peak and off-peak hours.

First look at new subway performance dashboard pic.twitter.com/pXUxKgzA43 — Dan Rivoli (@danrivoli) September 25, 2017

Fernando Ferrer, the MTA's Vice Chairman, praised the new metrics Monday for their focus on riders and their commute experience.

"This transparent and information-rich way of presenting information I think is important for all of us," he said at Monday's transit committee meeting. "I'm especially glad that train travel time occupies such an important part of this matrix, because that's the thing that really is important."

"There are a lot of ways to put these facts and figures into a Cuisinart and come up with whatever you want, but the time it takes to get from point A to point B, as someone who uses this system everyday, is the all-important figure. And whether it takes half an hour, an hour, an hour and ten minutes—that has an impact on somebody's life," he added.

Zak Accuardi is a member of the nonprofit Transit Center, which has long advocated for improved transit metrics in NYC. He tweeted Monday that the new dashboard is a "big deal," noting that "measuring the right thing = fixing the right thing." Accuardi lamented, however, that the historical data won't stretch far back enough for meaningful analysis, a href="https://twitter.com/zaccuardi/status/912348734675197953">adding, that displaying 13 months of data is "not enough to see meaningful trends in most cases."

With Emma Whitford.