Subway crime dips to lowest rate in 37 yrs.

Your subway ride is the safest it has been since 1969.

There have been an average of seven subway felonies a day so far this year - putting the city on pace for its most crime-free year underground since man touched down on the moon.

The current figures are light-years from 1990, when average felonies hit a record 49 daily - and are close to the 6.7 a day logged in 1969.

Subway crime is down 18.6% at this point compared with last year, thanks to a combination of surveillance cameras, undercover cops and sting operations at a time when ridership is at about 5 million a day, officials say.

"Our transit officers are doing an outstanding job," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. "They've brought the fight to the criminals on several fronts."

Subway police are increasingly going to the videotape - using the growing number of anti-terror surveillance cameras.

So far, the Transit Authority alone has rigged up at least 40 stations and expects 40 more to be working by the end of the year.

Before the anti-terror surveillance program, dozens of stations already had cameras recording images, TA spokesman Paul Fleuranges said.

Last year, a brutal stabbing in an unstaffed passageway on the Franklin Ave. shuttle line was captured on tape. Detectives noticed that the two attackers, who stabbed a man after a brief exchange of words, were both wearing khaki pants and identical short-sleeved shirts.

It was the uniform of an area business, detectives learned as they worked the case, which ended in arrests.