On my home this evening as my Q train crossed the Manhattan Bridge, we straphangers were bombarded with the endless stream of prerecording messages Transit has seen fit to install in its newest rolling stock. An important message from the NYPD that loses its importance after the 4000th listen played on, and then the courtesy announcement filled the car. Give up your seat for the elderly, handicapped or pregnant, it says. “Courtesy is contagious, and it starts with you.”
As I’m wont to do with this train announcements, I sort of rolled my eyes at it and then went back to chatting with my travel companion. Because of the repetitive nature of the announcements and the way they rarely change over the years, it’s become easy to just tune them out. They won’t be important; those announcements still come from the person driving the train. And they just add to the background noise of taking the subway.
Tonight, though, something about the courtesy announcement made me perk up. On the one hand, it’s a lecture aimed at recalcitrant New Yorkers. We have to be scolded into giving up our seats for straphangers who actually need them. We have to be reminded that it’s the right thing to do. But on the other hand, perhaps it’s a lesson we all could use.
Lately, since 2012 dawned, I’ve noticed a general attitude among straphangers that’s worse than your typical New York brusqueness. Yeah, we’re all trying to get somewhere quickly. Yeah, we want our trains to go faster and come more frequently. Yeah, we want our space and our seats. But why you gotta be so pushy about it?
The behavior I’ve seen has been nothing and everything. It has ranged from folks spreading out over multiple seats and getting upset when you say excuse me to a new breed of door-blockers who will not move no matter the circumstances to people who have never learned to walk on the right side of the staircase and get angry at anyone coming their way. It includes the people who sit down on top of you with nary an excuse me and those pretending to sleep so they don’t have to give ground. I’ve seen seated riders stick their feet out into the aisle so standees have no room, and I’ve seen the typical breed of pole-huggers.
What I haven’t seen though are manners. Try to carve out a space for yourself and you might get your head bitten out. Things seem far more tense under ground lately. Maybe it’s the chill of winter as we all take up more space with our bulky jackets. Maybe it’s general impatience with the MTA. Maybe it’s this fear that the Mayans were right and our world will soon end. Whatever it is, though, it’s out there, this quasi-menacing, full-on passive aggressiveness.
I don’t believe we New Yorkers are inherently rude despite what recent national surveys have said. Throughout my life, I’ve seen New Yorkers be courtesy with their knowledge and time. We don’t tolerate others who don’t play by the rules of the city though. We don’t like tourists who walk four across on the sidewalk or folks who are too buried in their phones to pay attention to the world around them. Maybe that frustration is coming out underground as straphangers try to find a way to protect their space and dignity.
Ultimately then, maybe we need to be reminded more often that courtesy is the right way to go. I’ve heard it’s contagious and that it starts with you.
29 comments
I blame headphones. I think they provide the perfect mindset for people to blatantly ignore others around them.
and you’re right, the new breed of door gorilla is particularly odious (though I note they have diminished in stature recently).
You just started noticing this? I noticed this occurring six years ago. In fact I sort of adjusted to it, though part of that was going out of my way to avoid crowds (difficult especially now with the subway).
When New Yorkers had a reputation for being rude, they were not in fact rude, just more to the point and respecting of other peoples’ space than is the norm in the rest of the country.
Now people are really rude, not respecting of peoples’ space, not communicative at all, trying to be pushier than really works in crowded areas. Its a sort of european style rudeness, where if you can get away with cutting in line, you cut in line, but I really blame the influx of suburbanites from the rest of the country. What works, sort of, in the suburbs becomes really bad in a densely populated city.
Agreed. The influx of suburbanites and transplants into New York City puts them at odds with New Yorkers who ride with the MTA from cradle to grave.
Different, more informative public service announcements on a faster cycle may help solve the problem.
The door blockers are the MOST offensive. How are the people behind them supposed to board? Sometimes, I just push my way through. Why should I enable their behavior by saying “excuse me”. Turn side ways, or if you must have the door, no matter what, step out of the train to permit egress/ingress and then step back on to the train. You’ll get your spot back 99.9% of the time because people know what’s going on.
I too have begun to notice this. Seems like no matter what the station/location, it never ceases to amaze me that there has to be that one person who will salmon against the crush of people trying to go up/down the stairs to leave the platform/station. Rather than wait the minute or so for the dozens to leave, this person absolutely must go against the crowd, slowing everyone down in the process.
Just boggles the mind really.
As someone who has lived in other cities I always find it amazing that NYers insist on turning stairs uni-directional with a crush of people. They should be both directions. And I always find obnoxious that people won’t wait just a minute by neatly filing behind others — ON THE RIGHT SIDE — instead of taking over the whole stair case.
But in general? I don’t know if it’s just good fortune. But I haven’t found much of any other of these complaints. Generally our behavior underground seems on par with other cities. We have FAR less seat hogs for instance. Our bus boarding manners are bad, but I don’t know if we have generally accepted rules that you should enter at the front and exit at the back like SF does, for instance.
I agree in theory, but when you have 100:1 in terms of people, it would be smart for the 1 or 2 people to wait for the huge crowd to pass rather than pushing hard and slowing everyone down. What would be the point in having all these people wait to the right with no one on the left? Perhaps due to the age of these platforms/stations, they were never built to accomodate the amount of current users.
That, or the MTA should build more stairways. 2 places come to mind regarding this…59th/Lex transfer from N,Q to 4,5,6 and the two rather narrow staircases on the elevated Astoria line. I don’t understand how the latter can’t be retrofitted to include additional exit-only stairways at the far ends of each platform.
If those 1 or 2 people are trying to catch the train that you just got off of, it would be nice if they had a chance. Once the doors have closed, I agree, they can wait, but they probably don’t know that the doors have closed.
Your Astoria line experience repeats itself on other lines all across the city. Lhota has proposed adding exits, although I don’t think the Astoria line is his top priority.
If the stairway is already that crowded, the one or two people are most likely going to miss it anyway
To be fair, I’ve done that at Whitehall Street on the (R) when a train just pulled into the station and I had to fight the crowd to catch it (and as we all know, the (R) train isn’t the most frequent train, which makes it more important to catch a train that’s already in the station)
I saw this situation but in a different context. While visiting Yonkers Raceway, I saw numerous seniors with walkers give me an atitude when I either bumped in to a folded up walker or happened to turn into an isle where someone with a walker was comeing toward me. either way the responce was swift & nasty & it didn’t matter that I mentioned that I was visually challenged, they still were nasty because I invaded there personal space which semed to extend 30-feet around from where they were posissioned.
some recent trends definitely contribute:
ipods
giant handbags
transplants
in fact, a transplant carrying a giant handbag while lost in her headphones is a pretty common sight
yes i’m generalizing, but that’s my anecdotal experience
have also notice a lot more people who block the door and even refuse to stand sideways. they usually get an elbow from me
I have no idea how people pick out transplants and tourists when stopping suddenly in doorways appears to be practically a civic tradition here.
I feel like door-blocking should be penalized with a traffic ticket, the way stopping your car on the crosswalk is. Or rather, is supposed to be… (I don’t think that weakens the analogy, but it leads to a somewhat gloomy conclusion about solving the problem). On the other hand, I feel like some folks here should probably review No true Scotsman before they come up with any more general theories of social decay.
“a new breed of door-blockers who will not move no matter the circumstances”
yes, i’ve noticed this too. previous door-blockers would turn sideways at stops (not that any kind of door-blocking is ok exactly) but now i see hefty persons just stand there wide as others try to exit and enter. infuriating.
I am a transplant (here for two years so far), so I haven’t noticed anything getting worse (yet). I have noticed that there are lot more people here that don’t know how to behave in a crowded place than in some other crowded cities I have lived in.
It’s not just suburban transplants of course, as we get a lot of transplants from other countries entirely. This is part of the problem, as a very large proportion of immigrants can’t read the signs or understand the announcements. If the announcements were translated into Spanish and Chinese it would be a big improvement. (Translating the signs wouldn’t help as much, because so many immigrants are illiterate even in their own language.)
But the door blockers sure are annoying. And on a half-empty train, just standing to the side is not enough – you shouldn’t be standing in the doorway to begin with. I usually shove them when I’m entering or exiting the train. It would be nice if the police ticketed them, as it is in fact already illegal to block the doorway.
I agree, although I’ve never run into door blockers here like the ones in DC. Those are generally larger, although on one occasion a teenage door-blocker nearly knocked me off my feet when I tried to squeeze past. I was so shocked I was speechless!
Public announcements: I hate the Disneyfication. I miss those Brooklyn, etc. accents. I also miss many important announcements because I’ve become so calloused by all the identically sounding and meaningless ones. When it is the actual conductor making a special update, they should be trained to give us an attention getting heads up first like “this is the conductor with an important announcement” or repeat it so one can catch the beginning of it again.
Door blockers: I agree wholeheartedly, they have gotten worse.I say one excuse me, then I just shove them ahead of me. Also annoying are the “pole huggers” and leaner’s. These are mostly tourists, I think, and if you just grab it in the middle of their back, they get the idea.
Some of the stairway salmons are folks rushing to catch the doors before they close. I try to always give them room to try to run for it.
My pet peeve. Those exiting through the barrel turnstiles who make you wait to get onto the train. Especially egregious where there are exit only options going unused 5 feet away. I see this at the brooklyn bridge station constantly.
Like the announcements or not, at least they are occuring (and mostly audible on newer trains), no matter how repetitive they may be. And they are getting your attention, even if you tune them out after three seconds. Also, I’ve heard some spruced up annoucements in my travels lately.
those announcements still come from the person driving the train.
Actually, they come from the conductor!
People are actually annoyed that I am trying to catch a train? Don’t take up the entire stairway!
What about those who sit on the stairs & prevent you from getting through? There’s a solution for that one – kick them in the back, excuse yourself & tell them you weren’t able to see them. It has happened to me more than once.
Good observations here. Another thing that seems to have grown worse over the past few years is the abuse of the emergency exits.
At my home stations, Woodhaven Blvd. and Forest Pkwy. on the J, people blithely stream through these doors more frequently than they did even a year ago — despite the fact that the blaring alarm should be the clue that this is something that they shouldn’t be doing. The willingness on the part of these oblivious dolts to ignore this alarm is embarassing to me as a New Yorker.
And, really, the police are complicit in this laxity. Using the emergency door should obviously be the equivalent of calling 911; the alarm should be accompanied by an automated emergency call to the police. Starting from the time that these doors were first installed several years ago, if the police had shown up upon the sounding of the alarm, then the practice of treating the emergency doors as normal exits would never have begun.
I do understand that there are some high-volume, space-cramped stations the where emergency exits should be converted into normal exit doors for everyday use. However, in most stations, they should be reserved only for actual emergencies. (Hence the alarm.)
Woodhaven Blvd. and Forest Pkwy. on the J are two of the more typical stations, locations where these doors should be used only for emergencies. The size of the crowds at these stations, even during rush hours, never necessitates the use of the emergency doors as extra exits; and the use of these doors saves no great walking distance. Also (and worst of all) the alarm is constant, restarting several times as people open the door after the alarm has already stopped. Especially at Forest Pkwy. at night, the alarm can be heard for a block on either side, going sometimes for minutes at a time, after the arrival of every train in either direction.
This foolish practice renders useless a potential emergency measure, while creating a great deal of noise pollution. All in return for no meaningful gain.
While I agree with you in the abstract, I feel there is one adjustment that needs to be made to those doors.
Today I was carrying several items in the subway, one of which was very long and awkward. I was riding in the middle of the day so crowding wasn’t an issue, and I wasn’t taking up badly needed space on the train.
However, getting my stuff over the turnstiles proved quite difficult. However, anyone can request to use the doors if they first scan their metrocard–the station attendant will then unlock the gate. This allowed me to get in without difficulty.
However, on the way out, the only way to open these is with a reduced fare metrocard–if they let anyone in with those gates, they should have a way to let anyone out. I had a very ahrd time getting my stuff over the turnstiles–thankfully a kind woman saw me and helped me.
I realize they probably have a motivation that they don’t want people traveling with large packages on the subway and taking up valuable space, and this is probably the reason they don’t make it very easy to use the doors. If they really wanted that, they could implement a policy that the gates will only be opened for reduced fare metro card users during rush hours, but be available to anyone at all other times (at staffed situations). Then they can put in a “request gate open” button on the other side.
It’s a pretty small issue I know. But it would make one aspect of subway travel considerably easier.
Agreed. Rolling bags? Baby carraiges? yeah the noise is annoying but it’s the least of the underground worries
Don’t the service gates all have buttons? (If not, they should.) That’s how you’re supposed to request access if you’re exiting or if you’re using an unmanned station entrance.
I have to disagree with this post that the problem of the subway is rudeness. I moved here from California and New Yorkers are far nicer. Think about it. In NYC you *have* to be a people-person or you won’t make it: you are constantly surrounded by others on the street, in the elevator, in the subways; you are trapped on an island so there is a sense of we are in this together (a small sense, but nonetheless it’s there); and then there is still some unconscious memories of Sept. 11th that forms the basis of community. In any case, the rudest city in America is Los Angeles [Google it], and being a born and raised Californian, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. Think about it. You don’t have to be a people-person to make it: you can drive by yourself everywhere; you can live in a detached home or apartment.. most, if not all, of your time is spent in solitude so when you meet the other there is a rupture that occurs; a sort of panic sets in and you (over)compensate by being dismissive or revealing a passive-aggressive narcissism. I’m from Northern California where people are, in my opinion, a bit better because the Bay Area is more like NYC with public transportation and limited land space and the reasons mentioned above.
The REAL problem with the NYC subway is the lack of signage; the dysfunctional vending machines – just tonight I had to pay a homeless person to swipe me through because BOTH machines were not accepting bills and, of course, no agent was around to provide a card. Then there is the fact that the system pierces your eardrums with harsh and brutal noise (New Yorkers probably have more damaged eardrums than other people.. I’d love to see a scientific project on this); the trash and rats everywhere, and the lack of screens separating the passengers from the track – screens eliminate the track fires caused by litter and prevent people either accidentally or intentionally falling in. In summary, NYC needs to fix the subway, not the people who ride it.
Still love the city, though!!
The homeless person who swiped you in probably vandalized the machine.
Every station has at least one manned booth (except on the Dyre line at night). It may not be at the entrance you’re using, and it may not even serve the direction you need, but if you need to speak to an agent, you can. And I think all of the unmanned entrances now have intercoms.
(I try to avoid the problem by buying or refilling my MetroCards when I leave the system, usually a day or two in advance, rather than waiting until they’re used up and I have to get in.)
The trains are much quieter than they used to be. Platform doors have been proposed, but they’re pricey, and in an old system that’s starved for funding, I’m not sure they’re the best use of capital dollars. As for signage, the subway has plenty of it, and for the most part it’s adequate. (Where have you found a “lack of signage”?)
Ben, thank you for a thought-provoking post. One thing I noticed on the subway a couple months ago is that the conductor is often screaming and shouting at passengers to “step allaway into the car,” or things like that. I had forgotten how aggressive the MTA staff were about that since I don’t ride the subway so often anymore.
Perhaps passengers’ grumpiness and unwillingness to be courteous is related to their being yelled at collectively by the conductor on every trip. It certainly put a downer on my day.