A true New York City subway connoisseur is not one who knows the fastest way from Point A to Point B. Rather, a true connoisseur is one who knows which set of doors will deposit him or her at the proper staircase to avoid the maddening crowd.
To wit, every morning as I journey from one Grand to another — Army Plaza to Central Terminal — I take a 2 or 3 to Nevins St. and switch to a 4 or 5. I know which doors on the East Side IRT deposit me in front of which staircase at Grand Central, and I know where I need to stand at Nevins on the way back home to make sure I’m primed to beat the crowds streaming to their homes in Brownstone Brooklyn. Sometimes I get a seat; sometimes I don’t. Either way, I’m out of the station quickly, and that’s the way I like it.
The Internet and the advent of mobile apps has rendered the challenge of identifying the set of doors closest to the exit moot. Exit Strategy NYC allows New Yorkers to unlock the secrets of subway exits across the city for a mere $4.99. But that’s cheating. Learn the exit strategy yourself, I say.
But what of the weary who don’t mind trudging slowly up to street level? What of the straphangers who don’t want to hang but just want to sit? For them, my answer is thus: Do not ride at rush hour. Easier said than done, of course.
When the MTA conducted its studies of crowding on the L and F trains this past fall, their documents included a look at the way people board the trains. Due to a variety of circumstances ranging from station layout to personal safety, the authority found that, generally, the back cars are emptier than the front cars. It’s not quite a shocking finding to anyone who rides the subways during off-peak hours, and those who ride during peak hours aren’t likely to notice much of a difference. The Daily News wrote up the findings this week anyway.
As The News notes, trains at isolated parts of the system displayed these crowding tendencies. “The MTA found that at the Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, station on the L line, dozens more riders squeezed into the first car of Manhattan-bound trains that started at the end of the line in Canarsie than packed into the final car. There were approximately 191 riders in the first car of those trains — 46 more than the maximum capacity guideline. Meanwhile, the last car held about 143 riders,” Pete Donohue wrote. “The same front-heavy pattern was found on Manhattan-bound F trains surveyed in 2009 at the Roosevelt Island station and at the Bergen St., Brooklyn, station.”
I’m more fascinated by the “why” of it, and in that why, we see a challenge facing transit planners. The front of the Manhattan-bound train is more crowded at Bedford Ave. because the bulk of the riders want to exit at that end of the station. Similarly, Brooklyn-bound L trains are often packed to the gills in the rear because the station entrances at 1st and 3rd Aves. are at the west end of the stations and because exits at Bedford and Lorimer Sts. are at the back of the train as well. In other words, people gravitate toward those cars closest to their exits. We are all expert riders.
As new transit routes are planned, then, those in charge must watch the ebb and flow of passengers. Some stations should have entrances in the middle of the train and others in the rear or front. Such designs better disperse passengers along the entire length of the train. The new Second Ave. Stations all have front and back entrances, and while platform access points from mezzanines should encourage some movement, by the time the Q from Second Ave. pulls into Times Square, it will have made a series of stops with entrances at only the front and back of the train. If there’s space, riders will learn to move toward the middle. And that’s the great exit dance of the subway rider.
32 comments
Looking at the 68th st station ADA and access improvement project, I wonder what is the cost of adding the stairs at 69th st. Just a few extra stairs to the street can cut station dwell time, add another way out with in case of emergencies, and improve peak hr service.
The 7 train also has crammed cars near stairs. Most of the stairs at stations in Queens are near the middle of the train platform. When they renovated the station, they failed to add another set of stairs at the east end of the platforms for transfers with the IND Queens Blvd at 74th St-Broadway. The cars in the middle and the western end of the station are frequently at crush capacity during AM peak hrs while the eastern end has room for dozens of people.
As has been mentioned before, on the L there has been chatter for over 40 years about building an Avenue A exit for the First Avenue station, so that passengers headed east from the First would have the option of not jamming the last two cars (the situation isn’t as bad on entry, as people will head towards the middle of the platform, especially if they’re transferring to the N/Q/R at Union Square or the F/M at Sixth Avenue). With the growth of traffic through the East River tunnel and of those using Bedford and Lorimer, it seems like the MTA should do something at one of those station to steer at least some of the crowd away from the westernmost cars.
“Exit Only”
Given that the trends over recent decades have included drastically reducing the number of station agents, increased electronic surveillance and the use of MetroCard machines to purchase tickets, it seems that adding more stair locations throughout the subway system would make perfect sense as a technique to more evenly distribute passengers.
That expansion need NOT include adding large plazas, emergency exit doors, MetroCard machines and card swipe turnstiles – just “Exit Only” turnstiles – like the one at 103rd Street on the outbound 1 Line. Funneling everyone into one wide stairway is OK for entering the system, because everyone doesn’t enter the subway at one time and, once inside, people move along the platform to their preferred exit car. But having too few exit options is the problem, and that’s what causes the uneven distribution of riders in the cars.
Solution: Build more “Exit Only” locations system wide. Even if only a small percentage – say 10-15% – of the 468 stations added a single narrow stairway with two “Exit Only” turnstiles installed, it could dramatically redistribute riders throughout the subway cars – and they would be a welcome addition for commuters at the end of a long day.
Can new exits be built in stations that are not ADA-compliant without requiring an overhaul to make the whole station ADA-compliant? If so, this sounds great to me. If not, I’m afraid this starts to get costly (though it’d be good to get it done eventually)
Hmm … point taken, Steve. This may be the case. I don’t know. But unfortunately it would just be another example of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
I think there is a slippery slope here. If we add MORE egress points to the system, this leads to more security issues in terms of fare evasion. Two stations specifically come to mind here for me. The Rockaway Ave. C stop in Brooklyn and the 167 St. D stop in the Bronx. At the end of these stations are exit only turnstiles, and I regularly see people waiting for customers to exit so they can slip in through the emergency exit doors. I have never once seen a police officer waiting around to catch anyone, and at street level, it is clearly marked “exit only” and “enter across the street at XX”. No one has any business walking down these stairs, yet I see it all the time with no repercussions. Adding more of these exit only points will only exacerbate the problem.
It’s not a big concern. Smart enforcement strategies can make evasion a non-issue or even somewhat beneficial. Make the fine high enough and capture enough people to (1) pay for the lost fares, (2) cover the cost of enforcement, (3) maybe even net a small profit.
Also, if they want they can probably come up with Metrocard exit turnstiles where there is no booth attendant. You’d need to swipe to leave a high exit, but at no charge. Could be expensive to maintain though.
I don’t see why there has to be another emergency exit. If the station required more emergency exits, they’d be forced to build them already. No … it seems to me that an argument can be made that the single “emergency exit” at the main ingress is enough, and if evacuating the platform became an issue, then you would have already improved upon it by providing two more exit turnstiles. That addition alone speeds more traffic out of the station.
The emergency exit is not really an “emergency exit” anyway. It just a place to roll a gurney through if the EMTs need to remove someone who isn’t ambulatory – so more than one isn’t required. Most of the time, it’s just a high-volume exit, or a place for people with big items or baby strollers to get through.
The Neighborhood Maps view at http://mta.info/weekender.html is also great for finding staircases when heading to an unfamiliar station.
What about stations that have additional exits that were closed over the years (particularly the years with lower passenger numbers and higher crime)? I know that in many cases the MTA has converted these to equipment storage, but the cost should be relatively low in comparison.
In some cases this has been done. Fulton St (G) of all places has had its South Portland St exits reopened over the last couple years.
Also, since the MTA is now cool with (since the last station agent cut) unmanned exits having regular turnstiles, there is opportunity here as well. I regularly experience the hell that is the Spring St exit on the southbound C&E. Three HEETs, two of which are completely out of the way. It’s a given that the emergency exit door will be used, even if only 15 passengers get out.
The location of entries is probably to blame for the issue as well; I’d say many people (if not most) don’t move all that much after getting on a platform.
It’s also like that on the N in Brooklyn, and that’s of course because the Sea Beach Line has nearly all of its entrances and exits at the very end of its platforms. The middle of the train is the least crowded part.
With the opening of the Second Avenue line will also come a new entrance/exit on the east side of the Lexington Ave/63rd St. station. I wonder if that will have any noticeable impact on F train rider distribution.
I agree, though, that the Second Ave line itself seems a bit unusual. The middle of those sprawling mezzanines will be largely vacant as passenger use the staircases at the ends. If anything, they (together with countdown clocks) might reduce platform congestion as passengers walk towards the center of the train on the mezzanine level before heading down the stairs/escalators.
I think it will. The Lexington-only exit (for escalators) at 63 St clearly affects where people get on at Roosevelt Island since 63rd/Lex is the first transfer point for RI riders going into Manhattan. Plus the elevators into the deep station at Roosevelt Island are on the front side as well with nothing at the back side.
The southbound 1 around Columbia has this effect, too — 116th has entrances and exits only at the north end of the station, and as a result, the southernmost cars have far less crowding than the northernmost.
This was very handy for me when I was commuting with a kid in a stroller, though — I wouldn’t have wanted a south exit at 116th because it would have meant I couldn’t avoid the crowding once trains start bunching in the morning.
Where possible larger & higher volume stations should have entrance & exit only areas for passenger distribution & crowd control.
I know this will be an oranges to apples comparison, but many of the double decker transit busses in Las Vegas have a passanger movement arangement on it’s stairs – up in the front & down near the back. This allows for easier boarding & disembarking at busy locations. It may not paint an exact picture, but you get the idea of what the MTA could do to improve customer flow.
The Shanghai Metro has some separate entry-only and exit-only turnstiles, mostly because of Asian cities’ dependency on distance based fares which have to be calculated upon exit, but it should work for improving passenger flow. Many a times I’ve had to wait for a barrage of people exiting through one entry/exit iron maiden.
The Metro stations in DC do this, although they don’t always get the balance right. There are times when passengers have to enter or exit through 1-2 faregates while most are set to the opposing direction.
This is really problematic where everyone tries to exit from the same car, in some cases through a single door. People would be off the train much faster if they were evenly distributed. It’s an example of what’s fastest for the individual slowing us all down as a group.
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I am completely against apps and the MTA’s promotion of said apps that give out clues to passengers about which subway car and door they should position themselves at to be nearest to the exit. I completely agree with Ben, it’s cheating. Figure it out for yourselves. If you don’t figure it out then that’s less crowding in those cars at and those doors because a lot of people are already doing this very act, including me.
If that’s true, it sounds like many riders aren’t doing themselves a favor. Perhaps most L riders to Manhattan want to want to get off at Union Square and a non-trivial number of those want to transfer to the Lex. In that case, IMHO the best place to sit when transferring to the Lex at Union Square is actually the back of the second to last car – you’re more likely to get a seat there too, but that’s besides the point. But if you aren’t transferring to the Lex, that might vary depending where at Union Square you actually want to exit. (I almost never exit there, but I transfer to the 6 a lot.)
The front-loaded cars are probably an accident of where the entrances on the L tend to be, particularly the one at Bedford Avenue, and nothing more.
If you’re getting out at 8th Ave then the back of the third car is the place to be – places you right by the stairway that never fills up because it doesn’t allow a transfer to the A/C/E. But if you have an unlimited Metrocard you can get around this and by now there are at least a dozen people per third car that have discovered this.
Maybe reactivate some of the abandoned side platforms at certain stations and use them as exit-only? PATH seems to do this and it works pretty well.
How about adding a time-delay to the emergency exit doors? Push the bar on the door for 10 seconds before it will unlock and let you out. This would cut down on a lot of the unnecessary use of these doors and lessen the fare-evasion of people sneaking in.
This is a provocative and creative idea. It’s counter-intuitive to delay an “emergency exit”, but when we actually think of how and why these are designed to be used, maybe even a 4 second delay would have the effect you’re looking for. 4 seconds is a long time to wait, instead of going through the turnstile a foot away. It’s worth it for the baby carriage or the big tool box, but the average commuter with nothing more than a brief case probably won’t bother to push and wait.
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I like the idea, Matthew. You should submit this to the MTA.
Damn. For some reason I have to post a comment of my own before I can see the rest of the comments. Is anybody else having this problem? There’s supposed to be 24 responses but I don’t see any (in another thread, the same thing happened, but I saw the responses after my response was posted)
I am in the habit of going to the least crowded car. From this I’ve noticed a few things: 1) most people stay near where they entered, no matter how crowded it is and no matter where they’re getting off, but 2) they also move toward the middle, always leaving the first or last car less crowded than the second or second-to-last. As well, 3) most people enter from the entrance corresponding to the station name – for example, while the 1 platform at 34th Street has entrances at 34th, 33rd, and 32nd, most people enter at 34th.
You can see this on the southbound G platform at Metropolitan Ave as well. For reasons I have never understood, the train stops with the last door lined up with a set of stairs, but there is a second set of stairs probably 100 feet down the platform. However, the two staircases are separated by a narrow part of the platform with a support pillar in the way.
People coming down that staircase have to run for the G, and everyone getting off bunches up at one staircase to avoid the people running for the train. It makes no sense. If the train stopped at the end of the platform the last car would have direct access to both staircases.
THIS has bothered me for the last 7 years! (I work in W’burg but live in South Brooklyn.) It seems to me this would one of the easiest “fixes” to make riders have an easier time. On the northbound side, the train pulls to the first staircase (so, in the morning, I ride at the 2nd door of the 2nd car, to exit staircase #2 — much less crowded than the 1st car), I can’t for the life of me figure out why the SB trains can’t stop one more train length back to maximize use of both staircases!
Me three (I don’t transfer there much anymore, but still).
“Exit Strategy NYC allows New Yorkers to unlock the secrets of subway exits across the city for a mere $4.99. But that’s cheating. Learn the exit strategy yourself, I say.”
hear hear! i had to do it! >:(
It’s a rare example of an app that’s worth paying for!