The MTA has announced special travel plans for Thanksgiving day, but when you put the pieces together, it doesn’t add up. First, New York City Transit will be operating on a Sunday schedule. That means less frequent service and no trains on the weekday, peak-hour lines (B, V, W, etc.).
But on the other hand, the MTA has announced that they will run more Metro-North and LIRR trains than usual in an effort to get people to the parade, to their Thanksgiving destinations and to their homes afterwards. That doesn’t make sense.
If the Authority is going to run more commuter rail trains to allow for higher-than-normal travel volumes, why not do the same for NYCT subways and buses? Cutting back subway and bus service in the city to Sunday levels seems a bit excessive. Maybe we don’t need subway service every three to five minutes as we supposedly enjoy at rush hour, but something more frequent than Sunday service should be in place.
I’m taking the subway to my Thanksgiving, and I’m sure millions of other New Yorkers will be doing the same thing. While I’m all for encouraging potential drivers to use the commuter rail options, subway riders and folks staying within the five boroughs shouldn’t lose out on Thanksgiving.
4 comments
Don’t you mean “operating on a SUNDAY schedule” rather than a SUBWAY schedule??? I hope the subway doesn’t operate on a bus schedule!!!
Oy. Thanks for that heads up, Adam. I fixed that bad typo.
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I think that the Thanksgiving service was adequate under the circumstances. The comparison to commuter railways isn’t always relevant. Many commuter stations have only hourly (or worse) service during non-rush hours. Even at its lowest ebb, subway service is more frequent than even the best commuter rail stations get.
Ironically, Thanksgiving service was much better than we’d normally have on Sundays. Thanks to constant service changes, the theoretical Sunday schedule almost never exists. But there were no service changes on Thanksgiving: trains ran the way they are supposed to run on Sundays (though seldom do).