For straphanging New Yorkers, summer means but one thing underground: It’s very, very, uncomfortably hot in the subways. Just how hot, though, is very hot? Recently, on a 92-degree day, WNYC’s Beth Fertig and Amy Pearl ventured underground with a digital thermometer to find out just how hot is hot. Their findings are unsurprising. According to the story (with accompanying audio), most stations were a few degrees warmer than outside temps. The Houston St. stop on the 1 clocked in at 95 degrees while the platform at Times Square registered a balmy 102 with blasts of heat up to 106 when trains pulled into the station. At 72nd St., the temps hovered at 100 degrees.
Once Pearl and Fertig boarded one of the air conditioned trains, though, the climate dropped to comfortable. Temperatures on board ranged from 70-74. Therein lies the rub. Because air conditioners work by taking heat from an enclosed space and removing it to another, the constant ACs units that make our subway cars tolerable make the platforms unbearable. Considering how much more time we spend on the trains, though, it is a worthy trade-off.
In the end, Fertig and Pearl found relief in a few stations with treated air. While they didn’t venture into the state-of-the-art South Ferry terminal for the 1, at Grand Central, they found the fans in place on the IRT platforms actually worked. The temperatures under those fans dropped to the upper 80s. Assaf Shave summed up most New Yorkers’ take on the heat: “As long as it’s not overly dirty I’ve learned to accept it and to adjust.”
I grew up three blocks away from the West Side IRT station at 96th and Broadway. For the first six years of my life, I learned the subway from the front windows of the 1, 2 or 3 trains. The 2 — the old red birds — were my favorite until one day in 1989 when the MTA introduced the 9 train. 