New signs illuminate the 7 train. Wonder express or local no longer. (Photos by Ryan O’Horo.)
On and off for the last few months, I’ve gotten questions about the 7 train. Take, for example, this one from my friend Carla: “How about doing an expose on why the 7 can’t get its damn local/express signage right?”
While I don’t ride the 7 train much — two trips to Shea this summer and one to the U.S. Open — I’ve wondered this lately myself. A few years ago, 7 express trains were demarcated by the diamond 7, and locals operated under the traditional round purple bullets.
But earlier this year, something changed. These signs, used interchangeably on the same trains, stopped meaning anything. Passengers had to rely on increasingly inaudible announcements to determine which trains were local and which trains were express. Well, not anymore.
This week, loyal reader Ryan O’Horo e-mailed about me about a 7 train equipped with LED lights that are designed to differentiate between express service and local service. A thread on Subchat corroborated the story. It seems like the MTA is testing out a way to allow passengers to tell the difference. The lights are hanging on only a few cars on the 7 line. Here’s what Ryan had to say:
Spent a good amount to time checking it out. It’s only this one train and the displays are mounted in the front, side and rear rollsigns both inside and outside the car. Simple modules that look custom and they’re just kind of hanging out in the rollsign, no fancy mounts.
According to the Subchat thread, the signs — using EXP for express and LCL for local — are supposed to go green or red, respectively, depending upon the service. So far, we haven’t seen that happen. But we have seen a lot of the signs as Ryan took a set of photos I uploaded to flickr. The thumbnails of a few images below lead to the larger images. For more shots, the photoset is here:
While clearly still an experimental stab at identifying trains, these LED signs are a good step in the right direction. I will forever wonder why the diamond-bullet variances couldn’t work to identify express and local services. I am also a little mystified as to why the MTA is invested in LED lights when they already have signs that should tell the difference between express and local service. But as long as the Authority is willing to listen to those Queens-bound customers who didn’t know if their trains were express or local, we can’t complain too much now.
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