View from Underground

A web-based weekend diagram is no stand-in for adequate customer service.

When the weekends roll around in New York City, I know just as well as anyone else that riding the subways becomes something of a crap shoot. Usual train routes are thrown out the window as weekend work forces the subways into an oft-indecipherable mess of service changes that are often scheduled with no regard for each other. We’re lucky if all of the folks driving the MTA’s subways know about the service changes. Expecting straphangers to memorize the voluminous changes simply isn’t realistic.

Now, we all know why the MTA has to change service over the weekend. It gives the authority the best time to perform work, and by reducing service over a span of 54 hours on the weekend, the authority doesn’t interfere with peak-hour, weekday travel. To that end, the MTA has tried to make weekend subway trips as easy as possible. They’ve redesigned their signs and unveiled an online diagram of weekend subway service. By and large then, it’s possible to find out either before you leave the house or once you get to the subway what the changes are, but when things go bad on the weekends, they go very, very bad. Communication, it seems, is the issue.

I had three experiences this weekend that truly drove home that point. The first happened on Saturday. I was waiting at Spring Street for a downtown 6 train in order to reach the Brooklyn Bridge stop where I could transfer to a Brooklyn-bound train. According to the MTA’s timetable, normal southbound service on the 6 at around 3:45 p.m. involves a train every eight minutes. I waited 20 minutes for mine as four different express trains passed Spring St. Not once did the MTA make an announcement concerning any delayed trains, and with the PA/CIS system offline, the countdown clocks could not placate the impatient masses. I could have walked to Foley Square in 20 minutes.

Today, I had a similar experience while heading to the TWA Flight Center for Open House New York. I made it to Jay St. at around 1:30 to wait for a Rockaway-bound A train to take me to Howard Beach, and I waited and waited and waited and waited. In the 30 minutes, I stood there waiting I saw four Coney Island-bound F trains arrive, four local C trains and four Lefferts Boulevard-bound A trains. It was not until later when I arrived home did I learn from Twitter that A service to the Rockaways had been temporary suspended due to a problem with the South Channel Bridge. The MTA never sent an announcement to the Jay St. platform, and conductors on arriving A trains failed to mention it either.

The final strike came on Sunday evening when I was journeying back to Brooklyn from the Upper West Side. First, the MTA had arranged weekend service so that it was basically impossible to get a one-seat ride from areas in Brooklyn served by the BMT Brighton Line or the IRT Nostrand, New Lots or Eastern Parkway lines to Manhattan. The Q wasn’t running at all, and the 2 and 3 weren’t heading into Brooklyn. I wonder if there’s a way for the MTA to stagger these service changes without cutting off an easy ride to the West Side for everyone in a large swath of Brooklyn.

With these service changes in place, the ride back from the Upper West Side featured numerous cut-ins by the conductor on my 2 train as he told riders where to go. As we pulled into Times Square, he urged passengers to switch to the N, Q or R trains to get to Brooklyn, and then he did the same when he told riders nearing 14th St. to take the L to Union Square. Now, generally, that’s a great idea, but by telling customers to switch to the Q, the conductor was giving out erroneous information. With the Q shut down, people switching from the IRT to the BMT would find themselves even more inconvenienced than if they simply made the out-of-system transfer to Bowling Green from South Ferry.

Now, I know and you know that the MTA doesn’t want to ruin people’s weekend commutes. They’d prefer to run frequently trains without altering the service patterns, but life with a subway system over 100 years old doesn’t quite work like that. We begrudgingly accept service changes. We shouldn’t though begrudgingly accept bad customer service and communication. Transit has a central control room with the ability to broadcast messages to PA-equipped subway stations throughout the city. When they don’t take advantage of that ability, it’s a problem.

Ultimately, there’s no compelling reason why Transit never made an announcement regarding the Broad Channel problems yesterday. If they can broadcast it to Twitter, they can send it to the station. With the PA/CIS technology in place, there’s no compelling reason why two 6 trains went missing from the schedule at 3:45 p.m. on a Saturday with nary a word over the PA system, and it goes without saying that conductors shouldn’t be telling riders to switch to trains that aren’t even running.

In the minds of customers, these little things all add up over time. If the MTA wants public support at a tough time in its financial and political history, it has to do its part too. Keeping straphangers informed of changes over the weekend when travel is already tough enough should become a customer service priority.

Here’s another gem that’s been making the rounds this week. It is a video from 125th Street on the 2 and 3, and it shows what happens when plainclothes cops tried to stop some fare-jumpers. Animal New York posted it this week with a note from the videographer:

Happened around 9:40pm on Friday, October 7th in Harlem below the 125th street and Lenox Street 2/3 station. These girls allegedly jumped the subway turnstile to avoid a fare. When the cops entered the train and tried to talk them out. It didn’t work. They began to force them out and this is what happend next. Not sure if you can fully see but there was a gigantic mob of people who had the cops/girls surrounded. Some seemed to be protesting the cops and others where if favor of the police action. From my vantage point it seemed like the girls were completely in the wrong, but I can’t be sure. It seemed like forever for back up to arrive but as you can see it wasn’t really that long. This happened FAST. Not sure what happened after.

The amount of disrespect shown to the system by those who ride might be greater than the amount shown by Albany.

Via Gothamist and Daily Intel, this one’s making the rounds today…

While the MTA frequently announces that it is both illegal and highly dangerous to ride on the outside of subway cars, I’ve never actually seen anyone do it. That is, never until know. This video lays it out as it should be. This is an idiot riding on the outside of the car. While the other straphangers seem to be cheering this on, I’m with Dan Amira of the Daily Intel:

If a subway surfer hitched himself onto our train, we wouldn’t be laughing and cheering him on — we’d be pissed off and snitch on him as soon as possible. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but kill yourself on your own time. The rest of us have better things to do than sit in a stalled subway train for an hour as they clean you off the tracks.

Seriously.

The MTA will soon launch a pilot program to target rat infestation. (Photo by flickr user Ludovic Burtron)

Rats and subways go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong, and lately, this become some major breaking New York City news. There are fewer cleaners! Rats like garbage! Rats are everwhere! Sound the alarms; ring the bells. Now, the MTA is vowing to do something more than just hang up rat poison caution signs once every few years.

As New York 1 reports today, the authority is going to engage in a Refuse Room Rodent Control Pilot Project . That’s right; when it comes to something even as basic as exterminating rats, the MTA must conduct a pilot program. According to reporter Tina Redwine, the MTA will be “working to move trash off platforms more quickly, and within six months it will tighten up conditions at 25 stations by installing door sweeps, cleaning garbage rooms, plugging up holes and exterminating.” That sounds like something they could tomorrow if they wanted to.

Anyway, it’s comforting — I guess — to see the authority taking rat control somewhat seriously. For now, though, targeting barely 5 percent of the system’s stations seems like trying to put out a five-alarm fire with a shot glass full of water, and I’m sure these remedial efforts will be successful for a few months until the rats adapt as they always do. What follows is the list of stations. Is one of yours a lucky one?

• 135 St. — northbound B, C lines
• 157 St. — northbound 1 line
• 116 St. — northbound 1 line
• 14 St. — northbound and southbound F lines
• 23 St. — northbound F line
• Lexington Ave. — northbound E line
• Bowling Green — northbound 4, 5 lines
• Jamaica Center Parsons/Archer — E line
• Brooklyn Bridge /City Hall at Foley Square — northbound and southbound 4, 5, 6 lines
• West 4th Street — southbound A, C, E lines
• Grand Central Terminal Main Refuse Room — 4, 5, 6, shuttle lines
• 34th St. — northbound and southbound Q, R lines
• 34th St. — northbound and southbound F lines
• Canal St. — northbound and southbound Q, R lines
• 7th Ave. — Queens and Manhattan-bound E lines
• 149 St. — northbound and southbound 4, 5 lines
• 167 St. — northbound D line
• Fordham Road — mezzanine D line
• 7 Ave — southbound B, Q lines
• 86 St — northbound and southbound C lines
• Nostrand Ave — northbound and southbound 2, 3 lines
• Bergen St — northbound and southbound 2, 3 lines
• Rockaway Ave — northbound and southbound A, C lines
• Ralph Ave — northbound and southbound A, C lines
• Nostrand Ave — northbound and southbound A, C lines

Above ground, it’s been raining pretty hard in the New York City area today. Below ground, it has apparently been doing the same. Via amNewYork reporter Tim Herrera comes this video of an E train entering Penn Station earlier today during the deluge. It’s sort of sad, sort of dramatic and sort of hilarious when straphangers have to use their umbrellas to exit a train underground. The subways are decidedly not waterproof.

If any frequently complaint about the New York City subways holds water, it is the one about the smells. Throughout the city, the subways often smell really bad, and it has become a part of the city’s collective identity. Maybe it shouldn’t be though.

My recent tale of olfactory woe in the subway came last week when I traveled down to the West Village to meet a friend of mine for dinner. I exited the West 4th St. station via the staircase on the downtown-bound platform. That exit is a lonely one. It features a pair of iron maiden turnstiles, no personnel presence even in the good times and a dark staircase that leads to Waverly Place. Back in 2007, the sign at the entrance told straphangers that the F, F and orange Q trains stopped there. It is a lonely, sad station.

Last week, it also had the distinction of smelling strongly like human excrement. As I passed through the turnstile, a strong odor slammed me in the face, and I and my fellow passengers hurried to find some fresh air. With standing water, discarded coffee cups and weeks’ old newspaper littering the floor, it was tough to say when that station had been cleaned. It wasn’t particularly recent.

Were this an isolated incident, I would probably be willing to overlook it, but it’s not. Throughout the city, various stations — some more isolated that others — carry strange smells. Dirty water snakes along tracks, sewage drips down station walls, garbage piles up and odors emanate. Try waiting for a train at the 2nd Ave. stop along the F for more than a few minutes; it’s not a fun experience.

A few years ago, when the MTA had money to clean stations, it wasn’t any better. Gawker published a now-defunct map of subway smells, and straphangers from all over pinpointed the various locations that smelled bad. Maybe it’s the sheer number of homeless people who live in the system; maybe its the groundwater that seeps through shoddily engineered or 80-year-old walls; maybe it’s the blatant disregard for cleanliness that riders have. It’s probably a combination of everything, and as the MTA faces a situation in which discretionary funds are scarce, cleanliness will suffer.

Smells, particularly those in exits and staircases and fare control areas, set the stage for the rest of the system. If someone entering the system encounters the odor of human waste, they will have little incentive to take good care of their portion of the subway. They won’t think twice about adding to the smell or littering. It’s a vicious vicious cycle.

Of course, it all comes back to money: The MTA doesn’t have enough money to inspect and clean the entrances even at stations as popular and centrally located as West 4th. How can they hope to reach little used stations tucked away in the far corners of the five boroughs? Nassau Ave. on the G train smelled nearly as bad this past Saturday.

So we suffer the smells. We plug our noises; we stop breathing; we hurry out of stations. What choice do we have? It’s the price we pay and another sign of a system sliding into disrepair.

With the attention recently on tablet computers in the subway — perhaps for some of the wrong reasons — I have a guest post today from my friend Joseph Pawlikowksi. In addition to writing with me at River Ave. Blues, Joe also keeps up with everything BlackBerry at BBGeeks, and today, he offers up this primer on the best tablet for your commute. I’m an iPad guy myself. It makes reading the papers in the morning on the subway far easier.

Since the introduction of the transistor radio, people have used electronic devices for entertainment on the subway. Think about how many people you see using one on the subway. On some days you might be better off counting the people who don’t have an iPod, a Kindle, or some form of electronic entertainment. The latest trend has involved the tablet PC. The iPad got everything started, and now it seems there are dozens of different tablets making subway appearances. There are dozens of tablets on the market, and each one provides a different experience on the subway. Here are your best bets.

Apple iPad

Pros: It is the standard bearer of the tablet computer. More people own an iPad than any other tablet, so it’s easy to get recommendations on apps and cases from people who already own one. It also has the largest selection of apps, so you’ll have plenty of choices for your entertainment. The big screen makes for great video watching, and there is plenty of storage for your music, videos, and apps.

Cons: The size and weight can be a problem. If you have to stand up, your arms can get tired holding up the iPad while you watch, read, or listen. It’s also an obvious target for any subway theft.

Android tablets

Pros: They come in many sizes, so you can find one that fits your specifications. There are even some that have keyboard attachments, so you can get some work done if you find a seat. There are also tons of apps in the Android Market. Best of all, many of them are free where iPad apps cost money.

Cons: The app environment on Android is not as regulated as on the iPad, so there’s a lot more crap to sift through. While the variety of Android tablets makes it likely you’ll find one you want, there is an abundance of low-quality Android tablets on the market that will break with reasonable wear and tear. That is, in order to find a high quality Android tablet you have to do some homework. The software also isn’t up to par with Android smartphones.

BlackBerry PlayBook

Pros: It’s one of the most compact tablets, measuring 7.6 inches wide by 5.1 inches high. That can fit in the back pocket of some jeans. The video quality is on par with the iPad, even if the screen is a few inches smaller. It ranks among the more durable tablets as well, so if you drop it while sitting you might be able to avoid damage you would incur with an inferior tablet.

Cons: There still aren’t many apps for it, though the addition of the Android player, which gives users access to Android apps, will help. That should come in the fall 2011. There is also no native email and calendar, staples of the BlackBerry platform, though again those are due to hit the PlayBook in the fall. It works best when tethered to a BlackBerry device, so BlackBerry owners will benefit more than non-owners.

A note to subway tablet PC users

If you’re going to carry your tablet on the subway, the first thing you need to do is buy a case. It’s amazing how little of a drop it takes to damage them. As these guys demonstrate, even a waist high drop can ruin your tablet if you don’t have a proper case for it. If you’re on the subway, it’s the No. 1 essential thing you need.