This may have been a tad bit extreme. (Photo courtesy of Reuters.)
New Yorkers often like to gripe about traveling around the city with a common refrain. “I coulda walked faster,” we’ll say about slow subway trips and sluggish cab rides through the congestion Big Apple. Tonight, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that.
In an effort to get myself home from law school tonight, I had to travel from W. 4th St. back to Park Slope in Brooklyn. It was after midnight, and that spells trouble in the subways. My first mistake was getting on an F train. Those are running on the A. I tried to switch to a 4 at Fulton St., and while the train came pretty quickly, we pulled into Wall St. and sat and sat and sat and sat. Eventually, the conductor told us about some single-tracking through the Joralemon St. tunnel due to track work.
When we finally made it to Atlantic Ave., the train ran express instead of local and, thus, would have bypassed my stop. I switched to a 2, and ninety minutes after swiping through, I made it home. According to Google Maps’ handy new walking directions, I almost could have walked faster.
I was pretty irate when I got home. A lack of communication on the part of the MTA — surprise! — had me and the other disgruntled passengers guessing about which train was heading where. The conductor on the F didn’t know if the train would go to Coney Island or travel along the A. The conductor on the 4 couldn’t tell us much of anything for nearly 15 minutes. But, hey, at least we’re not in Argentina.
Yesterday, a group of Argentinian commuters set fire to a delayed train. Reuters reports:
Furious rail commuters in Argentina set fire to a train on Thursday in anger over delays during the morning rush hour. Television images showed black smoke and flames engulfing the train at the station of Merlo, in the western suburbs of the capital, Buenos Aires. At nearby Castelar, passengers hurled stones at the ticket office and blocked the rails.
“We understand that people get angry when the service is delayed or canceled, but they absolutely can’t attack a public service in this way,” Gustavo Gago, a spokesman for rail company TBA, told local television.
Many passengers said the delays, caused by a broken down train, had cost them a day’s work.
I’m sure New Yorkers on many occasions felt the urge to burn their delayed trains. But that doesn’t solve the problem; it just causes more delays.
8 comments
I’ve ridden on those Buenos Aires commuter trains. If you are upset over the number of beggars in New York subway cars, the Buenos Aires commuter trains puts it into perspective. However, you don’t get that on the metro, which indicates that the poor sections of that city are the outlying areas.
(Overall, the Buenos Aires public transit system is better than ours, mainly because of the bus network. The trains are much more reliable but have less coverage)
Getting back to the subject, I think closing the subway stations at night is a dumb idea, but I would like to see something of a “night system”, designate frequent service on certain subway and bus lines and infrequent to no service on the rest, rotating lines on and off the night system for maintenance, and publicize this. The MTA seems to be doing this anyway, if you use the 6 late at night service is quite good, while if you want to take a N or an R forget it. But they don’t publicize which lines they run frequently and which lines are barely running at all.
There are schedules available in print and on the web. You can find out which trains run frequently at night and which don’t.
My strategy for dealing with the subways late at night is to avoid transferring. It takes long enough for one train to come after midnight; I don’t want to have to wait a year and a day for a second or third one, also. That means walking a few extra blocks sometimes to get the train that ultimately lands me closest to my destination.
I realize, Ben, that you thought you’d just be taking the F train home. Sorry to see that you got caught in the trackwork nightmare.
That’s a good strategy and one I usually adopt. Impatience got the best of me last night. And the signs for weeknight trackwork are not nearly as detailed as those for the weekend.
I think you could’ve just taken the F to Park Slope. It goes back to the F at Jay Street. Even if it doesn’t, you would’ve just switched to a G to Coney Island at Hoyt. Such is the IND.
Yes. This was my realization afterwards, but the F was crawling through the tunnel, and I thought the usually-reliable 4 would be faster. My original mistake was getting off the F in the first place.
[…] has the changes in a convenient map form. Me? Well, after last night’s ride home, I might just walk everywhere this weekend, Saturday’s rain be […]
If they did this in London, it’d improve the service. http://tinyurl.com/5umd4k
What about using a bike? I live next door to BK and get to work on the west side of Manhattan (20th St) every day. My schedule changes each day so I could be riding anytime of day between 7 am and 11 pm. It’s a good way to go. It takes about the same time as the subway when the subway is not delayed… but when is that, these days?