Slow as a snail, prone to delays, and overburdened by a

A. and overburdened by a ridership that grew by double digits in the last decade, the much-maligned F train is in dire need of a
correct

B. and overburdened with a ridership that is growing by double digits in the last decade, the much-maligned F train is in dire need of a
' last decade ' indicates event in the past

C. despite overburdened by a ridership that grew by double digits in the last decade, the much-maligned F train is in dire need for a
there is no exception required

D. and overburdened by a ridership which grew by double digits in the last decade, the much-maligned F trains are in dire need of a
wrong use of relative pronoun which

E. and overburdened by a ridership that has grown by double digits in the last decade, the much-maligned F train was in dire need of a
' last decade ' indicates event in the past

GMATNinja, Can you please explain how D is an incorrect answer?

The only difference I see is that -
1. That vs Which
2. Train is vs Trains are

Based on these differences how can we eliminate D?

relative pronoun which requires comma before it . 'Which' is used to in case of non essential modifiers. Therefore D is wrong.

Hello expert,
Could you please explain why 'usage of which' is wrong in option D?
Is it like..'which grew by double digits' is a important modifier and without it understanding of sentence will be difficult, therefore using 'that' is appropriate in this case.

Sayantanc2k is right: the question is flawed, though I don't think that (D) is a defensible answer at all. Here's (D) again:


"Which" is only correct here if you think that "which grew by double digits in the last decade" is non-essential information. And in this case, that information is 100% necessary for the sentence to make sense: without it, we're saying that the F trains are "overburdened by a ridership." Logically, the ridership itself isn't the problem, since we would certainly hope that public transit has some ridership; the real problem is the fact that the ridership has grown by double-digits. That makes (D) incorrect, since the "which" suggests that the double-digit growth is non-essential.

To be fair, it's generally really hard for the GMAT to test the difference between essential ("that") and non-essential ("which") modifiers in a single sentence, so you don't see it very often as a deciding factor in official questions. Another discussion of the issue can be found here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-new-crim ... r#p1839462

But again, the sentence is pretty flawed. I guess I'd settle for (E) if I had to pick one, since the parallelism at the beginning of the sentence is correct, and the ridership is correctly described with the essential modifier "that has grown by double digits in the last decade." "Has grown" is also an acceptable verb tense here: "in the last decade" suggests that the action started a decade ago and continues until today, so present perfect tense works well. But then the verb tense "was" doesn't make a whole lot of sense at the end of (E)...

Anyway, don't lose too much sleep over this one! Clearly some problems here.

In Option D, slow as a snail describes trains. Isn't there a subject-verb error here. Subject and verb don't agree in number.
In my humble opinion,
Slow as a snail, the runners from south lost the race is wrong
Slow as snails, the runners from south lost the race is correct

Please let me know if the understanding is not correct.

Kindly help me understand how can 'slow as a snail' modify a plural noun 'trains'. Thank you so much!

This question is flawed (see post below: slow-as-a-snail-prone-to-delays-and-overburdened-by-a-140257.html#p1841813).