The Lower East Side’s 2nd Ave. stop along the IND Sixth Ave. line is among my least favorite stations. (Photo by flickr user CabonNYC)
As we ride around the subways every day, we learn the various ins and outs of the stations we frequent. For instance, I know to look for a faint red light in the southbound B/D tunnel outside of 47th-50th Sts. that will disappear when a train is approaching. I’ve come to love Grand Army Plaza for its wide platforms and ample seating. The Sol LeWitt installation at the renovated 59th St./Columbus Circle stop adds a bright bit of color to the otherwise drab subway system.
On the flip side though are the stations we hate. These are the stations that exude, well, something. Perhaps it is an odor upon which we don’t want to dwell. Perhaps it is the cramped concourses, low ceilings or general sketchiness. Perhaps it’s the interminable wait on a cold winter night that makes us forever hate a station in Astoria, a station along the elevated tracks deep in the heart of Brooklyn or the Howard Beach station outside of JFK Airport.
Over the weekend, SubChat debated that very question. Which station, asked LuchAAA, is your least favorite? His was Lexington Ave. and 59th St. on the N/R/W. That station is always crowded, very dusty and smells pretty bad.
As the thread unfolded, many SubChatters highlighted the same qualifications for that least favorite station. Take, for instance, Osmosis Jones’ view on Chambers St. on the BMT: “It’s ugly and adequately named as it smells like a chamber pot.” Smells were a leading cause of station hatred with many of the BMT stations along the J/M/Z and the R stops in Downtown Brooklyn leading the charge.
But beyond offensive odors were those stations that seem neglected. The 53rd St./7th Ave. station earned numerous votes because of the long walk up from the depths of the lower levels, the smell and the foreboding nature of its nooks and crannies. SubChatters heaped scoren upon the Bowery station along the Nassau St. line. That station just seems forgotten with peeling paint, closed platforms, entrances lost to time and little care.
Then there are the recent monstrosities. The Archer Ave. extension, built in the 1980s, isn’t remembered for its architecture or presentation. Sutphin Boulevard, an entryway to the city from the JFK Airtrain, is dimly lit with ugly floors and dirty ceilings. The rest of those stations hardly inspire pride or confidence in the subways.
As SubChatters continue to discuss their personal subway dislikes, I got the sense that people dislike stations for a few key reasons. Some stations are just too crowded. The Canal St. complex where the BMT and IRT intersect is teeming with people, and the narrow platforms, especially on the N/Q level leading to and from the Manhattan Bridge, make waiting seem treacherous. Other stations smell bad. Still others are just left to rot away by the MTA.
In the end, though, it’s all about waiting. If we don’t feel comfortable waiting at a station — if we feel unsafe, if we feel as though the train won’t arrive because no one has cleaned the stop since the Reagan Administration — we will not have a positive association with that station. Maybe, then, as the MTA addresses concerns of subway security amidst cameras that don’t work and station agents aren’t there, the authority should ask people what they need to feel comfortable waiting at a station. Sometimes, new lighting, a fresh coat of paint, and no bad smells are a deterrent enough. As long as it looks as though someone cares about how the subways look, we all might just be safer.
24 comments
I’m reminded of how badly kept NYC subway stations are whenever I visit DC or LA. The stations there are so nicely kept and don’t smell like God knows what. I’ve never quite understood why NYC stations are so smelly. Dirty I can understand (4.5 million riders a day, 24-hour operations, etc) but the SMELLS are really disgusting for what is supposedly a “world class” system. And now that summer is fast approaching, the thought of a whiff of urine, especially in the IND lines, is enough to make me want to walk to Brooklyn. Is it just that NYers pee on the platforms, or is it because they haven’t been cleaned in 20 years? Truthfully, I’m about past the point of caring and wonder if a move to LA or DC is in order.
About a year ago, I had a friendly chat with the guy tasked with keeping the Lexington Ave-63rd St. station clean. It’s a rather deep station with multiple levels, and if you were in that station, it seemed you could always find him walking around with a mop or emptying trash cans. As one of the newer stations, it doesn’t show signs of age (despite the constantly broken escalators), and is always sparkling clean The gentleman, who took pride in his work, expressed remorse that he was going to be laid off in the next couple of weeks and said the station would never likely be so clean again. It’s always the good ones that go.
Meanwhile, what are the thoughts on the new South Ferry station? One reason I don’t own a white car, paint the walls in my house white, or dress my young son in white clothes is because it shows every speck of dirt. When the wall tiles at South Ferry gets dirty and discolored, they will begin to look like the J/M/Z Chambers St. station.
I’ve spoken to Transit about their approach toward firing cleaners first. They figure that we spend the least amount of time during our commutes in station. So why not keep them less clean to save money?
I think stations are where we are most vulnerable and more susceptible to the environment around us and that Transit should spend more on stations. Even if that means adding some garbage cans where there are none, that would be a step in the right direction.
If the TA were to add more garbage cans, who is supposed to empty them and change the bags? Those cans fill up more than once a day.
Cleaners. I’m clearly advocating for retaining people who clean the stations.
Nesta – If there were twice as many garbage cans, they should, in theory, fill up half as quickly.
Yes you’re correct. What I’m saying is that cleaners need to empty the cans but the TA feels that cleaners are not as important as the thousands of secretaries and useless managers who manage nobody, so the cleaners are being laid off or not hired as people get fired and retire.
Oh that’s a shame, I remember when I first saw that station when I moved to NYC in ’02, thinking that it had to have opened earlier that year because it was so pristine, it looks more like a Los Angeles Metro station (if you want to see clean stations, go to LA, so long as it’s not one of their 15 rainy days you could eat off the floor if you were so inclined). Despite being so deep, that’s actually one of my favorite stations because of the fact that it’s so clean/well-kept/the orange is so vivid, and the elevators there are probably more reliable on balance (can’t speak for the escalators).
Only gripe with that station: on the mezzanine-to-platform elevators, seems nobody can figure out which platform they want, largely because I believe they’re reversed, “lower” is “uptown/queens” and “upper” is “downtown/bklyn.” I’ve taken to telling people the direction I want rather than the platform level. Still, that’s kind of a minor gripe.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see SAS being built, but there is a teeny tiny part of me that will be sad to see those walls come down, just because they’re in such good shape ;p.
DeKalb has always been my least favorite station to be in due to the rotting ceiling and tiles that it had up until a few years ago. While the new tile does look a thousand times better than the old, the new tile can’t turn around the distaste that the old had left in my brain.
The most smelly station that I’ve found is the back half of the N/R platform at the 34th-Herald Square. The stench of feces rises up the stairs and hits me like a ton of bricks on the way down to the train.
least favorite station aesthetically?
perhaps smith-9 sts on the F/G in brooklyn. it takes forever to get up there, and i think it might be the windiest outdoor station i’ve been at.
The restrooms at
Shea Stadium-Willets Point-Mets are always a slippery mess, but I guess that’s to be expected when the whole thing shakes every time a train goes by! You’d need Disney-World caliber cleaners to keep that place clean. The rest of the station isn’t bad, except for the constantly changing local/express platforms and traffic patterns.So many stations ae in terrible shape. It’s becoming an embarrassment I would think. I use Union Sq regularly. MTA paid to have nice white tiles on the station walls on the far-side wall of each platform (i.e. where there is no platform on the opposite direction tracks), and they are covered in grime. They should be cleaned. Why can’t they just buy a cleaning car that blasts these walls, columns and platforms? Just close the station for an hour or so every 6 months. They close stations now for months of rehab work, so why can’t they do this to blast clean the grime?
Sounds logical, but if you were to use a pressure-washer to blast the grime off of those tiles, could you imagine how many tiles would fall off?
Actually, I think the problem with your idea is where to store the water. Either it needs a hose to connect to a local water source in the station, or it needs a heavy tanker car behind it. Also, there’s a fear of damaging signal heads and other improperly-waterproofed wiring. And you shouldn’t spray on the third rail!
They *do* have tank cars, the *do* have station cleaning cars and detergent cars. The LION does not know in what round of budget cuts their use was discontinued.
ROAR
Probably my least favorite place to venture is the passageway connecting the Downtown 6 at 51st Street to the IND. There’s been a persistent leak and mold problem there for years that makes the whole place smell like barf.
Can’t agree with you more. That connection near the elevator/steps leading to the Downtown 6 is atrocious! The stench has been there for at least 10 years now..
A lot of the smells are the result of water infiltration. You have garbage thrown everywhere because of lack of garbage cans (and people who seem to think, that because it already looks like a dump, what’s a little more), which means rats. Rats poop. Rat poop plus stagnant garbage water and throw in some bum urine/ feces, you’ve got horrible stenches.
The TA has had heavy washing crews, that come in with high powered pressure washers (I’ve seen them, the pressure is so high that when they’re washing they have to lean wayyy forward to keep from getting blown backwards). The TA also has work trains with pressure washing equipment that are supposed to come through an wash stations.
On the point about more garbage cans is more work: If the extra garbage cans were located where most people spend the majority of their time in the station, on the platform, then it really isn’t any more work. Every night, a garbage train comes through every station, crews get off and empty the cans, putting the bags into dumpsters on flatcars. If the extra garbage cans are on the same platform, it isn’t a big deal, is it?
I think that the lack of labor funds for enough station cleaners and the deteriorated state of so many stations makes station cleanliness a losing battle right now.
21st Street-Van Alst anyone? The walls on Brooklyn-bound side have rusted entirely.
How about the 1 at Columbus Circle. Dripping water where they are still rehabbing the station.
The A B C D platforms aren’t too bad.
Among heavily used stations, Sutphin Blvd–Archer Ave–JFK has to be the worst. It was never beautiful, even when new, and today it is in a woeful state. For a large number of out-of-town travelers, this is one of the first things they see in NYC, and it is not a pretty sight.
I certainly wouldn’t count a station like Columbus Circle, which is in the middle of a rehab project. Let them at least finish the job before we disparage it.
I think a good number of the elevated stations are terrible. So many of them seem to be in a sad state with the stairways and ornamentation on their roofs slowly deteriorating. The corrugated wind screens are quite the eye sore as well. Then there’s the issue with winter…
Underground, I would cast my vote for Sutphin Blvd / Archer Ave / JFK. Nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.
This is a pretty small station but Lawernce St/Metrotech on the R. It smells horrible, there are rats, the ceiling is decaying, there are always power tools going off to replace the stairs that are decaying, there is always water leaking onto the platform, and the R is never on time.
Personally I don’t mind the dirt. I mind the heat. Some stations, for example 72nd on the IRT, are sweltering in the summer.
I hate every single station on the Concourse Line. Maybe it’s just because I know how promising things were in the 30s for the Bronx, and that each one of those stations were IND efficient and machine-age beautiful, but today they all look like they’ve not been touched in 70 years, and the endless and half closed mezzanines are something out of “The Shining.” Even the renovated Tremont and 161st stations are grimy. Most of the Bronx stations are really bad, sadly showing the City’s priorities, but for some reason I just think the Concourse Line is even worse.
The only saving graces are the white glazed bricks at 167th and 170th, as they have held up much, much better than the tiles have. I often wonder why glazed bricks aren’t used more often in the system (cost?) but even here they are all present and cleaner than the tile. If only Fordham Road had the bricks, instead of suffering from tiles in all sorts of blues, purples, and off-white.