For more than a decade, New York City officials in charge of subway maintenance allowed a crumbling ceiling in one of the city's oldest stations to hang over commuters heads, despite knowing it was on the brink of collapse.

The New York Times reported the results of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's investigation this week, which examined the August collapse at the 181st Street station on the No. 1 line. The vast majority of New York City subway accidents occur on stairs or station platforms -- not in subway cars. The August collapse is one of three that the inspector general cited in saying the audit showed "systemic weaknesses in the adequacy of N.Y.C. Transit's station inspection program." The report said the collapse resulted from "a failure to communicate" between several city departments.

In 1999, a team of workers with New York City's Transit department identified the weakness and ordered installation of a temporary wooden scaffolding to protect commuters.

No permanent repairs were ever made. The presence of the temporary scaffolding was never noted and no subsequent inspection ever took a close look at the ceiling. Instead inspectors examined the station for safety hazards, either from the tracks or from the platform below.

After employees voiced concern that the wooden supports might catch fire in 2006 -- seven years after they were put in place as a temporary safety measure -- an inspection found further deterioration in the ceiling. It took another three years -- until June 2009 -- to get a work order approved to repair the ceiling. Work had been scheduled to begin in October but by then the ceiling had collapsed.

The inspector's report also cited a subway ceiling collapse at the Bowling Green station of the No. 4 and No. 5 lines and a platform collapse at the 18th Avenue station of the F line.

As the Times put it: "No one was hurt or killed, but not because anyone was paying close attention to a dangerous situation."