The TWU's petition drive will persuade this rat to leave the subway. (Photo by flickr user Ludovic Burtron)
No one likes seeing rats in the subway. It’s one of those universal things about New York City because rats are disgusting, unpleasant to look at and dirty creatures with which we co-exist uneasily. If it were possible to get rid of them all, the MTA would in a heartbeat.
Lately, though, rats have become more prevalent underground. Transit has cut its cleaning budget, and garbage collection runs have become less frequently. As trash sits, rats take over. Now, though, the TWU wants the MTA to take action.
Yesterday, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 unveiled a new petition effort. They are asking riders to sign a letter that urges the MTA to “adopt a System-Wide Rat Eradication Initiative immediately.” The petition is available online, and TWU operatives were out and about on Wednesday. “We have a huge rat problem,” Kevin Harrington of the TWU said at Parsons/Archer in Queens yesterday.
As union members called for more cleaners, the MTA said they were working on, well, something. “We are working with the city in an effort to find more effective ways of addressing the rodent problem,” the authority said.
It’s hard not to applaud the TWU for this initiative, but there’s no small sense of irony here either. Because of restrictive work rules, the MTA can’t use existing station personnel — many of whom have little to do — to help clean the system. They have employees who sit in their booths but can’t sweep the platforms or help with trash collection. Instead, we have a regimented system of jobs, and with the MTA eying the dismissal of over 200 cleaners in the looming years, the stations will just get dirtier and thus more rat-infested.
Subway Rider, a commenter on Streetsblog, put it best:
They think that attacking, undermining and directing populist and politician anger toward the MTA is a great strategy for them. Yet, all this strategy has done over the last 15 years is undermine the public’s confidence in the MTA and make it easier for Albany politicians to steal funding and resources from TWU employees! The result of TWU strategy is that TWU workers get laid off, their salaries are frozen and cut, their work conditions deteriorate.
But even more significant: The TWU doesn’t seem to get that making the public hate the MTA is bad for TWU workers. As far as the public is concerned, TWU employees are the face of the MTA. It’s the TWU workers who are sitting there napping in bullet-proof glass boxes while garbage collects in piles around them. The public doesn’t get angry at Jay Walder and the MTA board for that. The public looks at that TWU worker sitting in his box doing nothing and thinks: Hmm? Really? Is that a good use of MTA resources? Why is that man sitting in a glass box while machines dispense MetroCards and no one picks up the rubbish or puts up proper signage in this station?
When the group advocating for a solution is part of the problem, it’s hard not to grow cynical.
30 comments
Cute!
Rats aren’t just Litter Pigs dumping their garbage on the tracks, otherwise the 125th Station would be overrun.
For some reason, the 49th Street Station has more rats than I’ve anywhere else and often on the platforms! Please don’t come through those subway doors….
I cant tell if there are more rats in the subways or in Albany.
Maybe instead of petitioning the MTA, they should petition the rats.
Hey, how about banning eating/drinking thru the entire system?? We humans are pigs and this would greatly solve the problem. The rats wouldn’t have anything to eat if we weren’t such pigs. There are rats in the DC Metro but far fewer because of the food ban.
Maybe we should explore the idea, but it’s a tough case to make. Eating is one thing, but drinking? You’re gonna tell people they can’t drink water in sweltering stations in the summer? Or can’t have a coffee during a grinding morning commute? But even with eating, some people have 2-hour commutes and probably all but need to use the time to eat. I wouldn’t make that decision lightly.
An exemption for plain water would be perfectly reasonable, since it isn’t water that attracts the rats.
You can drink your coffee or eat your breakfast before you board the train or after you arrive at your destination. Most people I know can survive 2 hours without eating.
That said, I do think that an outright ban is overkill. Perhaps the police should actually fine people for littering.
It’s not about surviving two hours without eating. It’s about having time to eat – time you might otherwise have if your commute was shorter. Not saying it’s something that should make or break a decision on banning food, but it’s a consideration for people.
I personally lean more towards just fining the living crap out of people who litter, and using the proceeds to pay for cleaning. OTOH, I might respond belligerently if I couldn’t have coffee on the subway….
I seriously doubt that many people truly have no time to eat except while on the subway. Besides, eating full meals, which are often, how shall I put it, highly aromatic, in an enclosed space like a subway car is plain rude, even without the question of litter.
I don’t understand how people can bring themselves to drink coffee on the subway. I’d be afraid of spilling it, burning someone or maybe staining someone’s suit on his way to an important job interview. I guess most people don’t care about that.
We often talk about looking abroad at best practice and trying to adapt them here. Well, one thing some places do is refuse to allow streets and stations to be places for public garbage disposal. The result seems to be that people take more responsibility for their own waste, bringing it inside to dispose of properly. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere that has so many public trashcans as New York.
Of course, another solution would be simply outlawing or at least requiring deposits on the wasteful packaging we use. A night walk down any commercial street in New York often includes quality time watching little whirlwinds of cheap plastic bags and snack wrappers. Throw in some extra fines for the people who still litter, and a lot of the problem will go away on its own.
Wont help when rats rip open the 30 foot long pile of garbage bags infront of an apartment building every collection night.
I agree. And I’ve been saying it for years. The MTA should not be in the business of trash collect there for eating should be banned and if you bring a beverage with you it should be a container that can be sealed so if dropped the contents won’t spill if said container is sealed at the time of the drop so that excludes coffee from the local shops. Sorry. And if you bring a bottle of water you take the plastic bottle with you and dispose of it in the proper recycling bin on the street. Not underground. The system is over a century old. The rat problem can’t be solved with just one tactic. It’s going to take many tactics and removing garbage collection and ticketing littering is two of many needed to help.
Claims by the TWU that hiring more staff to clean station is going to fix the problem is false. We tried that and it failed to fix the problem. It’s like saying 80,000 rats system wide is acceptable with cleanings taking care of stations and removing trash in a “timely” fashion but 160,000 rats system wide is unacceptable especially with no cleaners to help keep the number of rats at an “acceptable” level. If you eliminate the source of food for the rats then you essentially eliminate the problem as a whole. People as a collective cannot be counted on to stop being slobs so you have to order them not to and include penalties for those who don’t understand the meaning of cooperate.
Am I really the only one that’s not at all bothered by rats in the subway system? I find them rather entertaining when I’m waiting for a train. Roaches are so much worse, rats are almost cute if you just see them as overgrown wild hamsters.
I’m not bothered by them directly, but I am bothered by the fact that they mean people are littering.
Rats are pets. Nobody has a pet roach.
Food should be banned. The rent from candy stores can’t equal the costs of cleaning. NYPD should be directed to strictly enforce the ban.
With such a ban in place cleaners could maybe hose down the stations twice a week, instead of the bi-annual power wash now scheduled. A hose down would cut down the dust, a constituent part of which is rat feces and rat poison and rat carcasses.
Every day I see people litter on the subway with no shame. They really don’t think there is anything wrong with it. The culture needs to be changed but it will be difficult because the “Authority” structure diffuses political responsibility . As it was designed to.
Last weekend I was in London, where eating is permitted on the trains. When I approached a cop and asked what to do with a used banana peel, I was directed to throw it on the floor behind the free newspaper rack. Here is how the tracks there look.
I suppose closing down at night helps. Also they probably had to totally reinvent the way they collect garbage and clean due to removing waste baskets because of the IRA bombing campaign.
I wonder if the arched nature of the ceilings and walls leads to a less dusty environment.
Must be running the vacuum train every night. I guess MTA runs it twice a year on any particular piece of track. I’ve seen stations get pressure washed bi weekly late at night. Not twice a year. Maybe some get washed much more often than others.
I don’t know how often the vacuum train runs in New York, but it’s very slow, so it requires the track to be taken out of service. London has it much easier in that respect than New York, since all of its tracks are out of service every night.
Only up to a point. London still has GOs every weekend, sometimes with entire lines taken out of service. The weekend I was there, the subsurface lines sucked, and the one I needed (Hammersmith & City) was not running at all.
Maybe they should clean the stations? Maybe? The older, unused portion of the downtown IRT platform at B’klyn Bridge-City Hall has had the same garbage (including dozens of empty orange juice containers) sitting there for about THREE YEARS. No kidding, THREE FRIGGIN’ YEARS of the same filthy, dirty garbage every time I pass there.
Absolutely disgusting.
First of all, the candy shops are not the cause of the trash problem… second, you’re never going to stop 8 million people from eating/drinking on the subways – too many stations and miles of track to police – it would be too costly and a lost cause
You’d be better off running a public awareness campaign and just collecting the trash.
There are too many people living with too much hardship to have it any other way. Think about how many umbrellas you see littering the streets after a heavy storm – umbrella snaps or slips and you just don’t care – people leave them and take cover
Best answer is making collection more efficient and revamping the station agent role to be Productive!
Agree with the above, if these guys have to be protected with bullet proof glass – there’s a problem – people don’t attack people without a grudge to settle…
The existance of the candy shops and the rent they pay is given as reason #1 for not bannig food. To eat on a moving subway train is so low class and ignorant that if you can’t see a problem with it…….I don’t know.
Bullet proof glass is there to prevent armed robbery. Not grudge-settling. I imagine someone with a grudge with the whole of MTA would take their gun to the HQ, not to one schlub at a station.
I wonder if the MTA could deal with the liability of opening the stations to local residents once a quarter or so for an effort to clean up their local station. Bring a mop, MTA supplies the soap and water. Come scrub walls and floors, and an MTA cleaning person can run the high pressure water sprayer.
Doubtful, unless service is suspended – otherwise, any work close to the platform edge requires flagging, and the general public isn’t trained in how flagging works.
I don’t think they can deal with the liability. It’s not just the volunteers but the public who would be near them. Of course when the MTA recommends a hepatitis vaccination (not mandatory) it might dampen enthusiasm.
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Has the TA approached the union about relaxing or modifying the work rules?
I’ve only worked for transit for two months and the things I’ve learned will shock you. I work as a cleaner @ a different station everyday and go off schedule to clean urine, vomit, feces at every stop. Trash is considered secondary to the cleanup of human waste! People would watch me clean an area and purposely dump garbage on the floor I’d just cleaned. The writer of this article has no idea what happens inside transit, I used to think the station agent did nothing also until I saw what they go through a day to day basis.
I’ve only worked for transit for two months and the things I’ve learned will shock you. I work as a cleaner @ a different station everyday and go off schedule to clean urine, vomit, feces at every stop. Trash is considered secondary to the cleanup of human waste! People would watch me clean an area and purposely dump garbage on the floor I’d just cleaned. The writer of this article has no idea what happens inside transit, I used to think the station agent did nothing also until I saw what they go through a day to day basis. There are so many people out there who cant operate the metra card vending machines,a lot of elderly people who are not good with technology, a lot of tourist and foreigners, there are a lot of New Yorkers who are illiterate. Every station that I have worked there is a line of people going to see the agent. Rats live underground for multiple reasons, it will be impossible to eradicate them, kill a rat underground and another from the surface will take its place. The Mta is really losing money from all the capital construction projects that purposely go behind schedule and have cost overruns to make certain companies rich! Things are not always what they seem, you can never judge a book by its cover.