Without congestion pricing revenue, the subway system could start breaking down again.

Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll find out how close the subway system is to another crisis. We'll also find out about a Broadway producer who has led one life but has written two autobiographies.

Seven years ago, in what became known as the Summer of Hell, the subway system was hobbled by serious problems -- two derailments; a track fire that sent nine people to the hospital; and a train that stalled in a tunnel, stranding hundreds in the dark without air-conditioning. The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, said the system was in a "state of emergency."

Congestion pricing was supposed to generate the revenue for repairs and upgrades that would keep a crisis like that happening again. It has now been two months since Gov. Kathy Hochul put congestion pricing on hold. I asked Ana Ley, who covers mass transit, where that decision has left the transit system.

The M.T.A. says that things are better, with 84 percent of trains on time now, compared with only 65 percent during the summer of 2017. How close has it come to a meltdown?

The system has actually been running much better than it did in 2017, because the M.T.A. has prioritized a lot of the nuts-and-bolts work that it had been putting off. The Summer of Hell was a perfect storm of engineering failures that reflected how politics and bad decisions diverted money away from the needs of the system.