Underground Grime Wave: MTA Cleaning Crews Tackle Tourist Trash In Midtown

By Jose Martinez, The City

Nov. 26, 2025, 5:00 a.m.

A seasonal surge in the mounds of trash hauled out of Midtown subway stations — and a bump in track fires last December at the stop beneath Rockefeller Center — will result in additional track cleaning at those locations through the end of the holidays.

Starting days before Thanksgiving and extending two weeks past New Year’s Day, 47-50 Streets-Rockefeller Center and 12 other nearby stations will have their tracks cleaned weekly, instead of the usual 14 or 30 days, according to the MTA. The schedule shift is part of a push by the transit authority to reduce the odds of trash causing service disruptions by accumulating where trains run.

“It’s unpleasant to see debris on the tracks, so we don’t want people seeing that buildup,” Bill Amarosa Jr., head of subways at New York City Transit, told THE CITY. “But it can cause problems for fires, it can cause emergency brake activations, it can affect the signal system, it could also clog up drains.”

The proactive plan comes after trash heaps littered stations in past holiday seasons.

According to the MTA, each bag of garbage collected at the Rockefeller Center subway complex between Oct. 1, 2024, and Jan. 31 of this year contained an average of 62.4 lbs. — compared with 51.1 lbs. per bag at other times of the year.

And those numbers are on the rise: During the same period a year earlier, MTA crews collected an average of 44.3 lbs per bag at the station during the holidays, an increase from 27.6 lbs. of garbage per bag in non-holiday months.

Senior Vice President of Subways William Amorosa speaks about an uptick in ridership at the Rockefeller Center station during the holiday season, Nov. 21, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY

”We noticed last year it was about a 20 to 30% increase in the number of bags they were removing from this station and some of the surrounding stations during the holiday season,” Amarosa said. “So it makes sense: You have a big uptick in riders, you’re going to have more people around, there will be more trash to pick up.”

The increased cleaning frequency also grew out of MTA data that showed what agency documents describe as an “uptick in fire incidents” in December 2024 at the Rockefeller Center subway complex — where weekend ridership more than doubles during the holidays and spikes by 30% on weekdays in the last month of the year. The MTA could not provide detailed numbers on the increase in track fires.

“It wasn’t much of an uptick but it’s something we wanted to keep an eye on,” Amarosa said.

Systemwide, the number of subway fires between October 2024 and last month increased 8.5%, with the number increasing from 816 to 885, according to the MTA.

The Rockefeller Center stop on the B, D, F and M lines becomes a bigger draw during the holidays as tourists flock to the “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall, Fifth Avenue shopping, the ice-skating rink and to see the famous Christmas tree, which is set to be illuminated Wednesday, Dec. 3.

MTA data shows that the station — the 13th-busiest among 472 systemwide — averaged close to 41,500 riders on weekdays and nearly 35,000 on weekends in 2024.

Tourists pack the streets around Rockefeller Center during the holiday season, Nov. 25, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY

“All the people coming to see the tree and go to Radio City is really increasing the volume and that’s why it’s so important to be focused on it,” Amarosa said. “And we want a good experience for the riders coming out who may not be riding regularly.”

But in a subway system where, according to the MTA, more than 2,060 tons of trash were removed from the tracks from January 1 through the end of September, the grime wave noticeably picks up in Midtown stations during the holiday season.

“It’s New York, it’s always going to be dirty,” Joel Perez, 30, who commutes daily between Queens and Midtown, said while waiting for a train at Rockefeller Center. “But you definitely notice it at the holidays, I guess it’s because of people being outside all the time, partying or getting drunk.”

Station garbage cans are supposed to be emptied at least once every eight hours, with bags stored in metal platform bins or in refuse rooms before being shipped out of the station daily on trash trains. Junk taken off the tracks is put into heavy-duty bags and taken out at street level, where it is carted away on trucks.

The stations that are set to receive additional track cleaning span from 34th Street to 59th Street. Among them is the city’s busiest subway complex, Times Square-42nd Street, where tracks and platforms on the 1, 2 and 3 lines and the N, Q, R and W are getting extra shine.

“Last year, a couple of years ago, I noticed more trash and stuff on the tracks,” said Chad Carter, 31, who was waiting for a Queens-bound train at Rockefeller Center. “I know it’s the subway, but you like it to be clean.”

The MTA will also have additional customer service workers in Midtown stations to help guide tourists, along with beefing up track cleaning over the holidays.

“It’s one of those things that you have to keep doing it over and over and over again, because it keeps coming back,” Amarosa said. “So you’re never done cleaning up trash, you always have to keep going back and doing more.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.