On Sunday afternoon, I headed off from Brooklyn to the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Alphabet City’s Tompkins Square Park. Generally, the best way for to go is via the F train to 2nd Ave. It’s a short walk from 1st Ave. and Houston to Tompkins Square.

But it’s the weekend, and things never go as planned on the weekends. Manhattan-bound F trains were running along the A tracks from Jay St./Borough Hall to West 4th. So I had to take the F to West 4th and then switch to a Brooklyn-bound F train making the stops in Manhattan. That Brooklyn-bound train showed up right away, and this weekend service advisory cost me just a few minutes of extra travel.

In New York, we tend to grumble and groan about the myriad service changes. We never know which train is running when and where. But as I silently bemoaned the endless service changes, I realized things aren’t much better elsewhere.

Take China. As The Times pointed out on Sunday, it’s a different — and dirtier — world across the Pacific. With the Olympics headed their way in just under a year, China is panicking. For the largest nation in the world, the Olympics will serve as a coming out party. After years of following an isolationist foreign policy, China will welcome emissaries from all over the globe.

As part of the Olympics, the Chinese are constructing a new subway line at breakneck speed. But they’re also have problems with customer service on the current rail systems, Reuters reported last week:

China is trying to stamp out protests over rail delays ahead of the Beijing Olympics, threatening passengers with legal action if they stay aboard their train once it has reached its destination. “Refusing to leave the train will be regarded as an illegal act endangering train safety,” the China News said, citing a long list of unlawful measures proscribed by central authorities.

There have been several instances of Chinese passengers refusing to leave their trains after serious delays, demanding compensation and an apology from state-run railway operators…In the report, jointly released by the ministry and the Public Security Bureau, passengers must conform in order to ensure a safe and orderly environment before the Games taking place in the capital in August next year.

Yikes. I’d hate to end up in a Chinese prison over a train protest.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., a city with just five subways lines, every single line had a problem on Sunday. According to the WMATA, five different incidents of smoke and fire on the tracks or in equipment rooms led to rampant delays all day. This is of course analogous to the subway floods from a few weeks ago that knocked out nearly all of the subway lines.

So as another week begins — the last one before the Labor Day holiday — we should take comfort in knowing that New York is not alone in dealing with subway problems. But more importantly, the MTA is listening to its riders and subway bloggers. They’re using report cards to grade lines, and they’re keeping their eyes and ears on the pulse of the riders. We have a great subway system with room for improvement and a whole bunch of leaders willing to take the steps to improve it. And that is always a good thing.

Photo: Firefighters in DC work to restore order to the Metro. (Courtesy of WUSA 9)