One of the challenges of "poor-er" people...e.g. those on local stops in outer-boroughs is the curse of express trains running past their stops. They are expected to switch again and come back to the stop where they should have stopped anyway. Subway metrics show the trains are operational, but they arent -- it is people adding 20-30+min to a commute because only half the station is operational.
Meanwhile the metrics (and exit counts) will show regular operation. Sharing dashboards like these suggest a working system when it isnt actually working that well.
That's a great point, and I agree: the subway doesn't do a uniformly good job of serving the city's population. There's a reason the wealthy areas are around the lines that they're around.
That being said: that's been true for 100 years. The claim (which I agree with!) that the subway experience is worse when poor doesn't have the temporal aspect that your original claim did (that subway performance has gotten worse recently.)
Meanwhile the metrics (and exit counts) will show regular operation. Sharing dashboards like these suggest a working system when it isnt actually working that well.