The going rate for being stranded on the subway in bone-chilling temperatures during a blizzard is about $250 an hour.
Some of the roughly 500 straphangers who got stuck on the A-train for approximately 10 hours nearly four years ago when a colossal storm brought the city to its knees with two feet of snow were recently paid $2,500 each, the Daily News has learned.
The settlements were reached with 38 riders who faulted the MTA for literally leaving them out in the cold on December 2010 as the train idled without food, water or heat.
“When I think about it now, I can’t believe it happened in New York City,” said Agnes Hui, one of two-dozen plaintiffs named in the biggest among a number of lawsuits. “It was horrific.”
Her lawyer Aymen Aboushi said their main goal was to ensure that something like that never happens again with the appointment of a customer advocate who’d look after the interests of straphangers in times of crisis.
The MTA said that had happened within weeks of the snowstorm with the creation of “dedicated customer advocates to ensure the well-being of customers on stuck vehicles,” which has “improved performance in subsequent storms.”
An agency spokesman said the change – one of many implemented after the debacle – had nothing to do with the suit, which was filed in Queen Supreme Court about a year after the blizzard.
With the advocate in place, the two sides spent the next few years haggling over money and the last plaintiffs collected their check in the past week.
“It was a fair settlement for all parties involved,” said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.
Hui, who was returning with her daughter from JFK Airport after a flight was canceled, said it “was really maddening the MTA never apologized,” even after the frozen fares had been rescued.
Aboushi, who litigated the case pro bono, said that was the reason he insisted on some form of payout.
“It’s just a token of an apology from the MTA,” he said. “Governments don’t apologize — they pay.”
oyaniv@nydailynews.com
