View from Underground

In 2005, iPod ads were everyone in the subway. Today, bleeding headphones have become ubiquitous. (Photo by flickr user t_a_i_s)

I found myself on Monday evening awaiting a downtown 4 train on the IRT platform at Union Square. As the downtown 6 pulled out and an express idled on the uptown tracks, it was loud. The automated PA voice kept warning me to stand back from the moving platform; the downtown trains screeched around the sharp curve into the station; and the heated system on the idling uptown express hummed.

It is little wonder then that the noisiest spot in New York City is at a subway station. According to a recent study by Hear the World, the noisiest spot in the city with trains roaring by is the B/D/F/V stop at 42nd St./Bryant Park. The noise levels reach 93 decibels at the subway system’s 18th busiest stop.

According to hearing experts, that level of screech is enough to cause permanent hearing damage, and Craig Kasper, a Columbia doctor who works with Hear the World, urged people to be mindful of the noise. “Once you reach anything over 85 decibels, you are really at risk,” he said. “If you hear a loud noise, just put fingers in your ears.”

Outside of Bryant Park, subways in general were the fourth most noisiest part of New York City, behind the West Side Highway and the bus lanes on 42nd St. east of Fifth Ave. A typical subway ride exposes a straphanger to 80 decibels of sound. Although the new R160s are designed to reduce noise levels both as trains ride the rails and as they brake, there’s only so much engineering can accomplish, and sounds are aplenty underground.

Interestingly, this survey seems to reduce the noise levels found this summer when one group warned of 100+ decibel exposure at some subway stations. Those built around curves are the loudest as trains make more noises braking through twisted sections of track. If only we could go back in time to fix those errors of original engineering over 100 years ago.

Noise on the subways, meanwhile, is not a new phenomenon. As Bill Bahng Boyer, one of my guest columnists over the summer, explained in August, New Yorkers have been complaining about the noise since October 29, 1904, one day after the IRT opened for business. What is a new problem however is headphone bleed. Have you tried to take a relatively silent ride lately? It’s impossible.

Once upon a time, boom boxes were the scourge of New York City subway riders. Those with their noises in magazines would dread the arrival of a gang of youths with a loud radio on for all to hear. It was the ultimate in obtrusive noise pollution, and eventually the combination of a crackdown and the onset of personal audio devices saw boom boxes become a relic of another era.

Today, though, we are subjected to subpar headphone earbuds. Brought about by the iPod revolution, nearly everyone is now satisfied with tinny headphones that leak sound all over the place. Some riders listen at volumes that are death to the ears, and nothing is worse than hearing the strains of something from 15 away in a a half-empty subway cars. Others simply don’t know how bad their headphones are. One day, I imagine, New York City may see an increase in the number of people suffering hearing damage, and the iPod earbuds will be to blame.

For now, we should be mindful of the noise. Obviously, the subways are noisy, and those sounds can impact our life. We tend to tune out the sounds of metal-on-metal, the sounds of air conditioner drones, the screech of brakes. But it’s there, hurting our ears decibel after decibel.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year, but what a year it’s been. As 2009 draws to a close, I want to take a minute to reflect on the site. I’ve had more far more visitors this year than I did last, and many of you have stopped to leave a comment. From fare hikes to service cuts to progress along Second Ave., we’ve covered it all this year.

So as the year ends, I’d like to repeat my final post from 2008. Last year, I looked at the ten most popular posts from the previous year, and right now, I’m going to do the same. Although budget talks and funding solutions dominating the conversation, the most popular posts usually are a surprise.

1. The graffiti debate: Glorifying art or vandalism?
Two decades ago, the subways were covered in graffiti, and then the City and MTA decided to attack the art. Now, the subway is clean, but those graffiti artists feel slighted. As galleries begin to reminisce on the era of graffiti, we examined whether we should classify graffiti as misunderstood art or vandalism. The debate still goes on today.

2. Yankee Stadium Metro-North stop ready to go
As the Yankees went on their World Series run, the MTA opened a new Metro-North stop a few blocks away from the team’s new home. Jorge Posada, David Cone and Brian Cashman were on hand to lead reporters through the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The station was a success in its first season.

3. Wearing the Vignelli subway map
Something Vignelli seems to make the Top Ten every year, and the 2009 entry is a post I wrote about a dress for sale that featured the Vignelli map. The item is now unavailable, but it cost $249 at the time. Any subway buff worth their stripes would now own this one. I have yet to see anyone wear it though.

4. Foreshadowing a Second Ave. demise
As the MTA’s fiscal crisis robbed the agency of its operating budget, I wondered if the eventual lack of investment in transit would lead to the end of the Second Ave. subway work as well. For now, Phase I construction seems safe, but anything beyond that is a crap shoot.

5. Mythbusting the MTA fare hike
Friend-of-SAS and On Transport writer Chris O’Leary guest posted his FAQ about the fare hike. As the MTA has descended into fiscal chaos, misinformation about the authority reigns supreme, and few news agencies are willing to set the record straight. His post is as relevant today as it was in March.

6. Inside the Bleecker/Broadway-Lafayette Construction
In November 2011, Transit will finish up the project designed to connect the uptown 6 platform to the rest of the Bleecker St./Broadway-Lafayette station. In the meantime, I explore the ongoing work and what it means for commuters who use the 6 and the B/D/F/V stop in the area.

7. When it was a train: the H
Every now and then, some train’s rollsign is set to the wrong line, and New Yorkers wonder what that relic of another era was. We’ve seen a 13 train on the 1 line, and for the this post, we explored what the H — the old designation for the Rockaway Shuttle — was doing on an A train.

8. At 7 extension groundbreaking, Bloomberg slams SAS
As the MTA began to prepare for the TBM drops at the 7 line extension, Mayor Bloomberg took the time to criticize the Second Ave. Subway. He claimed that the new, badly needed line on the Upper East Side was destroying business but declined to mention why investing $2.1 billion into the 7 line expansion was a good idea.

9. Nostalgia Train to run December Sundays
Everyone loves the Nostalgia Train, and it ran this year in Sundays in December. Transit continued this festive holiday tradition despite a mid-month snow storm that shelved the old vintage cars for a weekend.

10. To save money, MTA may axe student MetroCards
We first heard of the MTA’s plan to save $170 million through student MetroCard cuts a few weeks ago. Although students are protesting the cuts and politicians do not look favorably upon them, no one has offered up a reason why the MTA should foot the bill for student transit costs.

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And that’s the year that was in Second Ave. Sagas. I’ll be back tomorrow with the weekend service advisories. Remember: Transit running extra service after the ball drops tonight, but trains run on a Sunday schedule on New Years day. Have a safe and happy New Year.

For tomorrow, the final day of the year, I’ll present my personal Top Ten stories of 2009 as I did last year on New Year’s Eve. Today, let’s review the year that was in transit news.

For the MTA, 2009 was a struggle. The year started with fears of service cuts and fare hikes and, after a brief reprieve that wasn’t as substantial as promised, service cuts are back on the table. January started with the MTA’s attempting to come to grips with its fiscal crisis. The agency set March 25th as its drop-dead date for a bailout, and the Authority and TWU announced they would go to arbitration. As the agency struggled with its own economic reality, the opening for the new South Ferry station was delayed due to an engineering issue. The MTA received some good to end the month as the beleaguered Fulton St. Hub earned a stimulus-inspired reprieve.

In February, the MTA announced that ridership was at a 59-year high, but Bridge & Tunnel revenues were plummeting. The Tunnel Boring Machine began its work along 11th Ave. where the 7 line will soon run. Transit fixed a 70-year-old typo, and the month ended with news that the MTA’s deficit could reach $2 billion. Cuts were nearly inevitable.

March was a rough month for the MTA. First, Washington, DC, announced full underground cell coverage by 2012 while the MTA’s pilot program for the city is seemingly dead. Meanwhile, Albany continued to throw charges of two sets of books at the MTA. We first heard of the Gang of Four as the plan to institute bridge tolls on the East River Bridges began to die a slow death. The MTA Board approved its Doomsday budget by month’s end, and the Second Ave. Subway officially lost its third track.

For rolling stock buffs, April began with word of the R160 making its F train debut, and the MTA announced a May opening date for the new Yankee Stadium Metro-North stop. As Senate talks of a bailout plan began to breakdown, the MTA announced a summer rollout for the planned service cuts. I again wondered whether or not station agents actually did anything as Doomsday inched closer and closer. Along Second Ave., the new MTA timeline showed a mid 2016 debut for the project’s Phase I.

May brought a tentative agreement on the MTA’s funding package. It was an imperfect solution and one that cost then-CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander his job. The Second Ave. Subway earned $79 million in stimulus funds, and we discussed the MTA’s pension problems. We also saw a 13 train on the 1 line.

In June, the fare went up as Richard Ravitch warned of a bleak 2010 for the MTA. Transit announced 4 express service in the Bronx, and the R40 slants made their final runs. The MTA sold the naming rights to the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. station and sweetened Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards deal. Transit announced lower-than-expected ridership and fare revenue figures for 2009.

The summer saw a reprieve from the bad news. We explored funding transit through market-rate parking spots or a 36-percent fare hike. As the subways were accused of being very noisy, we went in depth on the Bleecker St./Broadway/Lafayette St. reconstruction efforts. Jay Walder earned an MTA appointment and pledged a fully-funded capital plan. The Feds and the MTA debated whether or not the SAS Phase I would open in 2017 or 2018, and the G train was extended to Church Avenue for the duration of the Culver Viaduct rehab.

August saw some good news. The MTA, despite immediate operations budget problems, unveiled a $28 billion capital plan to cover the next five years of transit expansion. On the heels of this announcement, we examined why transit matters in New York City. Bus arrival boards made a 34th St. debut. The MTA lost its TWU arbitration case and promised to appeal. Meanwhile, Transit dealt with the fallout from a major accident as the ceiling at 181st St. along the 1 line collapsed. For two weeks, Northern Manhattan commuters faced headaches and crowded trains.

September started with the Walder confirmation hearings and ended with TWU protests. In between, Jay Walder announced plans for a new fare payment system by 2014, and the Comptroller’s Office released a report critical of Transit’s station maintenance efforts. We explored sending the Second Ave. Subway on a spur through Alphabet City, and the MTA eliminated its station agent program.

Technology took center stage in October as the MTA announced plans for an A Division rollout of the train arrival boards set for a 2011 completion date. Carolyn Maloney graded the Second Ave. Subway, and NY1 axed Bobby Cuza’s transit beat. The F line was on the wrong end of a critical internal review, and we bemoaned the lack of Second Ave. express service.

Early November saw more personnel upheaval as Howard Roberts left Transit. A few days later, Tom Prendergast was named the new Transit head. The East Side Select Bus Service plans were nearly firmed up, and someone was murdered on a crowded D train early on Saturday morning. The initial 2010 budget featured no service hikes or fare cuts, but that utopian view would last just a few weeks. The Cortlandt St. stop on the BMT Broadway line reopened on Thanksgiving Eve.

Oh, December, what pain you have brought. Although we spent the early days of the month looking at the lack of megaprojects, the last few weeks have been all budget woes all the time. First, the state cut $140 million in appropriations for the MTA. Then, the state revealed a $200 million payroll tax shortfall. All of a sudden, Doomsday service cuts — but no fare hikes — were back on the table. Then, the MTA lost its arbitration appeal and unveiled a plan to cut free subway travel for students. We saw a plethora of solutions but no real answers for the MTA as the agency approved the service cuts two weeks ago.

And so that’s that for the year that was in transit. It has been a seemingly cyclical year. The agency has moved ahead along Second Ave. and 11th Ave. as its capital plans to expand the system are firmly in place. Yet, the operations budget has been attacked and trimmed so that it can barely support an adequate 24-hour transit system. Hopefully, as the political debate over student MetroCards and other service cuts heats up into 2010, we’ll have a better year upon which we can reflect 365 days from now.

Have fun with this one. It’s quite the way to waste a few minutes while you try to stay warm on a snowy Sunday.

The poster at left — click it to enlarge — has gone up through the subway system. It is a rather innocuous warning about the impending winter. Because snow will slow down above-ground and at-grade subway lines, Transit is warning customers now, before it snows, to allow for travel time on service changes when the snows start to fall.

In cars along the BMT Brighton Line — the Q and the B — a similar sign has gone up in recent weeks. This one — available at the end of this post in full — warns of leaves on the tracks. Because much of the line from Prospect Park to Coney Island is in a tree-covered trench, falling leaves tend to create slippery rail conditions. Trains may experience problems braking, and although not frequent, delays may plague the lines as a result.

For Transit, these two signs represent the new face of customer relations. The agency is trying to keep straphangers in the loop about problems that may crop up along popular subway lines. Yet, as Sewell Chan explored, some people simply do not trust the MTA no matter what. In an article on the sign, Chan managed to track down a bunch of riders who accuse the MTA of making excuses for sub-par service.

“Because of leaves?” one rider, Sylis Gordon, asked incredulously on Wednesday as she waited for the Q train at the Parkside Avenue station. “That’s new.” She looked around her, noticing garbage on the tracks, but said, “There aren’t that many leaves.”

Kate Jassin, 29, a doctoral student at the New School who was waiting for the shuttle at the Prospect Park station, exclaimed: “Delays because of leaves? That’s amazing.”

To counter the problem, the transit agency has operated a vacuum train that sucks up leaves and other debris over the tracks once a week, as well as a special rail-adhesion train that applies “a gritty material that helps create some friction between the wheel and the rail” each night, said James E. Leopard, the line general manager for the B and Q and the Franklin Avenue shuttle.

Mr. Leopard said he decided to post the roughly 500 signs — focusing on 14 stations at or below street level, as well as in subway-car windows — starting in the middle of last month. The signs are to be taken down by early next week.

Now, I don’t believe that Ms. Jassin’s and Ms. Gordon’s comments are indicative of any sort of widespread popular opinion. Plus, these two probably know about as much about running a transit system as I do Medieval French literature. But these comments don’t exist in a vacuum: People — riders, customers, advocates — simply do not trust the MTA.

I believe this sense of distrust comes from Albany. It comes about when Carl Kruger blames the MTA for his own mistakes. It comes about when corrupt comptrollers level false charges of bad booking at the agency, and it comes about because our city and state leaders cannot make the commitment to mass transit that the area requires and demands.

The MTA isn’t creating excuses that aren’t there. Leaves, trash, snow, anything outside can get on the tracks and slow down trains. By knowing ahead of time, most rational riders would simply allow a few minutes. But with the MTA, few in New York are rational, and overcoming this PR problem is just as much a solution toward public acceptance and support as finding $200 million to cover an unexpected budget gap is.

Click through for a full view of the leaves poster.

Over the next few hours, hundreds of thousands of people will flock to airports around the country. Some will take buses and taxis while others take subways and commuter rails. Many will rely on monorails to navigate through terminals, and others will have a short walk to the gate all in a mad dash to get somewhere before Thanksgiving.

It is, then, fitting that Michael Grynbaum started the day on The Times’ City Room blog with a paean to the Train to the Plane. For New Yorkers old enough to remember the 12-year subway experiment, the Train to the Plane was a three-car subway that made seven stops in Manhattan — three in midtown along the 6th Ave. line with a switch to the 8th Ave. line south of W. 4th St. — and one at Jay st. in Brooklyn before going express to Howard Beach. In the days before the JFK AirTrain, airport-bound passengers then had to take a shuttle bus to the terminals.

The fares for an express bus with luggage racks and on-board officers weren’t cheap. The ride, as Grynbaum, relates, cost $3.50 in 1978 (or $11.60 in 2009 dollars) and rose to $6.75 by the time service was discontinued in 1990. The train remains part of subway lore though, and Grynbaum tells more of the story:

After a year, the train was handling about 2,000 rides a day, or 12 percent of all trips to J.F.K. from Manhattan. Gas shortages and two strikes on the city’s bus lines helped attract interest — not to mention the infectious theme song, composed by Charles Morrow, a celebrated jingle writer and one-time collaborator with Simon & Garfunkel.

But there was backlash. The train ended before the actual airport, so passengers had to switch to a bus. “Internally, we used to call it ‘take the train to the bus to the plane,’ ” said Trudy L. Mason, who helped oversee the express train service at the transportation authority.

And everyday subway-goers had to be reminded not to step onto the specially marked express trains, which loaded at the regular subway platforms. “One erring passenger did find his way aboard,” a reporter for The Times noted in May 1979. “When the conductor tried to collect the $3 fare, the man apparently thought he was being shaken down and refused to pay.”

The trains, graffiti-free and patrolled by a police officer, were the cleanest in the system, which some riders seemed to resent. “These brand new air-conditioned J.F.K. trains pull into stations with horns blaring,” Joseph J. Filippone of South Ozone Park, Queens, wrote to The Times on July 18, 1979. “They go gliding by, almost always at least three-quarters empty, while thousands of commuters are resigned to stuff themselves into already overcrowded, hot and dirty trains.”

By June 1980, The Times was already wondering: “JFK Train: Wasteful or Wonderful?” The train was running a $2.5 million annual deficit, and officials began discussing an early demise.

As passengers eventually realized that they could reach JFK by taking a slightly longer trip but paying just the regular fare by riding the A train, the Train to Plane fell to the wayside. Every few years, City officials begin a push for a true raillink, a dedicated track that would connect Lower Manhattan to the JFK Airport. We missed an opportunity to build one out to then-Idlewild when Robert Moses built his highways, and due to an estimated cost of nearly $10 billion, we saw a recent effort die in spite of a guaranteed $2 billion federal grant.

And so we remember jingles and long-gone express trains. As many travel for the holidays, we take moderns trains to modern monorails to over-capacity airports. One day, our Train to the Plane may come, but it won’t arrive any time soon.

On early Saturday morning, for just the second reported time this year, a man was murdered on New York City Transit property. Although the details remain vague, a 37-year-old Bronx man named Gerardo Sanchez was arrested for the murder. I don’t want to be put too much stock into just the second incident this year, but we can see a few lessons for riders in this rather senseless death.

Yesterday evening, the Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog summed up the various accounts of the murder:

According to the either dozen, two dozen, or nearly thirty other passengers in the car, Sanchez asked another passenger, Dwight Johnson, 36, to move his bags to free up a seat. Johnson refused, a decision the News calls “understandable” (the News went with both “a half-filled car” and a “nearly empty car”).

Sanchez, who per the Post is either “hulking” or a slightly-built 5’6,” argued with Johnson, at least six inches taller, until Johnson punched him in the face. At that point Sanchez pulled a steak knife and stabbed Johnson repeatedly in the hands and neck.

A passenger pulled the emergency cord and notified the conductor, who contacted police. He was told to seal the car, with a number of other passengers trapped inside, until police arrived at the…station five minutes later. Sanchez managed to slip the knife out of the train door, but it was retrieved from the tracks later.

Runnin’ Scared reported that the police arrived at Rockefeller Center to make the arrest while pictures showed Sanchez removed from the subway at 59th St./Columbus Circle. Other reports had the police at the 7th Ave. stop. Still, the crime happened in the blink of an eye between Rockefeller Center and 7th Ave.

Lesson #1: Do not place bags on the seat next to you

Although the <em>Daily News said that “no right-minded person” would demand a fellow passenger to remove a bag from a seat and that Johnson “understandably” declined, the reality is that Johnson was violating New York City Transit regulations. Section 1050.7 (j) of the Transit rules says that a person may not occupy more than one seat “when to do so would interfere or tend to interfere with the operation of the Authority’s transit system or the comfort of other passengers.”

Lesson #2: If someone asks, just comply

It’s often tempting — especially in half-full trains — to spread out and take it easy. Yet, we never know much about other riders. When someone asks to sit down, the best response is to simply remove your bags from the empty seat and allow them to sit down. If you get a vibe from the other passenger that perhaps you don’t want to be sitting next to them, get up and move. I know this approach seems to run counter to our normal sense of personal space and etiquette, but it falls under the “safe than sorry” category.

Lesson #3: Don’t pick fights with homeless riders

According to some reports, Mr. Johnson may have been a homeless rider on the subway. If so, this makes Mr. Sanchez’s decision to start this fight even more perplexing. One of my rules of the rails is to avoid any sort of confrontation with indigent riders. Nothing good can come of it, and I’ve seen far too many fights between homeless riders and other straphangers or amongst groups of homeless riders who feel others are invading their turf.

Lesson #4: Is there a collective action problem?

This one isn’t so much a lesson as it is a thought piece. A few people noted in the comments on Saturday’s short post about this incident that the other riders in the car should have come to Mr. Johnson’s defense. I err on the side of avoiding confrontations on the rails, especially those that involve knives. I can understand other people’s attempting to separate two men fighting, but this incident spiraled out of control in the two minutes it takes a train to go from Rockefeller Center to 7th Ave. Should we really expect passengers to step in? I don’t think so.

Lesson #5: Alert the driver or conductor

Late at night, it’s far safer to ride in either the front car or the middle car of the train. That way, the conductor or driver will be around in case of an emergency. Although the driver did not see the incident — probably because the new wider drivers booths often have blacked out front windows — he responded quickly once alerted to the emergency by another passenger. These workers will respond in case of a problem but often need to be told of the problem.

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In the end, I am generalization from something that happens approximately twice every 1.5 billion underground trips. It can by psychologically crippling to walk around underground fearing a murder, but we can be smarter passengers for it when one happens.