MTA officials this week blamed a recent series of subway meltdowns on a copper thief who ripped out wiring in the Bronx.

Transit officials during a meeting on Wednesday said the vandal, identified by the NYPD as 55-year-old Efrain Velez, singlehandedly upended service throughout the city across three separate days last month. The MTA said he pulled wires off the tunnel tracks near the 149th Street-Grand Concourse station, causing the signals in the area to switch from green to red, bringing all train service to a halt.

MTA officials said the problems delayed 755 subway trains across the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 lines, which hammered the subway’s on-time performance metrics for October.

“The primary driver of October’s weekday on-time performance decline was a series of atypical vandalism inc

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