View from Underground

On Wednesday, I took two subway trips along the same lines that illustrated to me how the subways work when everything is perfectly in sync. I can’t help but wish the subways would always be so obliging.

My first trip took me from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall stop in Manhattan. At around 20 to one, I sauntered down the stairs at Grand Army Plaza and had just enough time to make my way to the back of the train when a Manhattan-bound 3 pulled in. Three stops later, at Nevins St., I had to wait all of a minute before a 4 arrived.

By 1:05 p.m., I had reached my destination at Foley Square. It was a stress- and wait-free subway ride, and I couldn’t help by tip my cap to the Subway Gods who seemed to be smiling on me. Little did I know that they would pay a repeat visit a few hours hence.

Five hours later and running a few minutes late, I again sauntered down those very same steps at Grand Army Plaza, hoping for a train to start me on my way to Astor Place. This time, the 2 pulled in before I had a chance to reach the platform, and again, I was off. At Nevins St., the 4 again came after a barely-noticeably wait, and as I stode on the platform at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall, the 6 obligingly showed up on time. When another 6 pulled in on the other side of the loop, I knew we would not be long for the terminus, and two minutes later, that Bronx-bound 6 pulled into Canal St.

I would arrive at Astor Place less than 25 minutes after I boarded at Grand Army Plaza the first of three trains I would need to take. It was a subway trip from heaven, and too rarely does that happen in New York.

As I contemplated this ideal day of subway travel, two thoughts filled my head. The first was on the inherently selfish nature of New York City subway riders. We’re happy only when we don’t have to wait at all for a subway ride, but if that train takes three or five or eight minutes to arrive, passengers grow irritable and impatient. New Yorkers are happy to arrive at movie theaters a full 40 minutes before show time, but heaven forbid that we wait ten minutes for our $2-per-ride subway train.

But I also thought about the nature of our subway system and not just the people who ride the subways. My trips yesterday were as the subways should always be. I didn’t have to wait longer than two minutes for a train, and the connections were smooth and quick. I know I was riding along the popular IRT lines during peak hours, but should that excuse the relatively poorer service along other lines? Should that excuse sluggish late-night service and inconsistent weekend service?

As always, these desires boil down to funding. If the MTA had access to limitless monies, we could enjoy a subway system that runs as often as Transport for London can run the Tubes. At 11:45 p.m., we could see trains come through the tunnels every five minutes instead of every fifteen minutes. But the money isn’t there, and the will to produce more money to simply maintain the current state of the system doesn’t seem to be there either.

Maybe one day, we’ll have the transit system we need and deserve. For now, I’ll just keep riding the trains during the day and thinking about how blissful life is underground and how quick the subways are when I don’t have to wait long for the trains. It’s always nice to dream.

I’m on vacation for the next week, but since New York’s subways never shut down, neither will Second Ave. Sagas. I’ve enlisted the help of a few bloggers to help keep things fresh around here. Today’s guest post comes to us from Todd, a frequent SAS commenter and the author of Blog Name Removed.

Last Friday, I was slowly making my way downtown on the 4 train. It was a bad ride; we kept stopping between stations for long periods. Apparently, there was a problem further down the line and everything was backed up. It got to the point where people were cursing The MTA aloud. Then all of a sudden this elderly African-American man walked into the car. He was easily 7 feet tall; it was quite striking. (When was the last time you saw an obscenely tall old man?) He had to stoop, even in the tallest part of the train. After he found a seat next to me, we both sat and watched another guy grow increasingly angry at our whole non-moving situation.

Finally, the tall old man stood up and walked over to the angry guy. T.O.M. kinda tapped him on the shoulder, and in the most grandfatherly and non-offensive way, told him this:

“Son, this is what you get for a two-dollar ride. This is the cheap ride. It’s what you get. If you wanted to go fast, you go up there [pointing up] and pay for a ten-dollar ride. That’s the fast ride. This is the two-dollar ride. We go slower down here. No sense getting angry about something you can’t change.”

Angry guy stopped being angry. In fact, everyone within earshot just stopped for a second, including me. Then T.O.M. sat back down and everything was calm.

That experience has really stayed with me.

When Ben posts bad news about the subways, I am one of the first people to start blasting The MTA. The trains are always late, they smell (you my boy C-Dog!), they are too hot, the stations desperately need rehabilitation, the unions ruin everything, the workers are lazy, the MTA never finishes anything they start, their report cards are useless, and on and on…

That tall old man was right. If I wanted the faster, cleaner, and more reliable ride, I could pay for a cab. Even then, I would probably end up sitting in traffic inside a hot car that smells like curry, sweat, and broken dreams. The subway is still the best way to commute. It is much better for the environment, and it is very inexpensive, especially with the monthly pass. Sure, it sucks sometimes, but it is nice to put it back in perspective every once in a while.

I’m on vacation for the next week, but since New York’s subways never shut down, neither will Second Ave. Sagas. I’ve enlisted the help of a few bloggers to help keep things fresh around here. Today’s guest post comes to us from Gerrit, better known as The Altar of Entropy at 2Log.

Hear it go clink, ya pansies… the gauntlet’s officially down!

Let’s recap.

2log, wherein I do my blogging, hosts a weekly competition among talented bloggers to determine who’s best of the best. Many fortnights ago, Ben threw his hat into the ring. And he bloodied us all bad. What can I say… he fights dirty. he came armed with… with… with mouth-watering pictures of nachos. Who could resist?!?!

Although I could use my short stint as a guest-blogger for Second Avenue Sagas to write one of my many flippant posts about the subway, I thought I’d use it to bring the fight back to Mr. Kabak’s home turf.

Way back in the day, I pitched Kabak a series of questions about the subway, but he only answered two of them correctly. For my post here at Second Avenue Sagas, I respin the underlying theme of my third question into a larger, more philosophical question:

WHY DOESN’T THE MTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX INSTEAD OF RAISE SUBWAY FARES?

I know what you’re thinking… it’s because they’re a pack of dorked up, Diet Coke downing, middle-manager rejects with curiously large nose hairs whose idea of creativity is putting a U2 album on shuffle. Whoa there, Mr. Negative… let’s not go all John McCain this early. Here’s some crazier ideas they could try as a possible source of additional revenue. Some are so crazy they just might work.

Stick Some Junk in That Trunk
This was my original idea… late at night, when the subway cars aren’t in use, use the MTA to transport freight about town. Gas prices are ridiculously expensive, right? Seemingly 20% or more of the city’s traffic is trucks hauling shipments. Why not use a few cars on the late-night trains, which are pretty much deserted anyway, to offer merchants cheaper rates on shipping. The upside for passengers is that, if the program becomes super-popular, then late night passengers will see more trains roll by and their wait time will plummet, especially along trains that touch a port (like the airports or any hub to dirty Jersey).

Kabak countered that it has something to do with the gauges, but I say that’s nonsense. A single subway car easily holds 50 people. At about 150 lbs a person, that’s at least 7,500 lbs of cargo per train without any modifications. So what you have to say ’bout that?!?

First Class Trains
Where do airplanes make their money? It’s not on coach, it’s on the rich idiots who are willing to pay extra to be separated from the commoners. So here’s what you do. Take the first car on every train, and call it a first class car. Tear up the orange plastic seating and install plush La-Z-Boy chairs. Offer a copy of the Wall Street Journal and a latte, and charge $50+ a ticket. There’s enough wealthy hedge fund bankers in the city who would take the deal, and the rest of us would be happy to not have to ride with them.

Chinatown Subway
Pretty much the opposite of the previous example. Some wizard figured out how to operate a bus at only $10 to Philadelphia that runs faster than the trains and outside traffic combined. Why not find this genius and offer him or her the key to the tunnels. For only a quarter, they’d build a high-risk train that could take you from Flushing to Canal Street in 13 minutes. BOOM BLAP! I don’t care if it’s hauling heroin, I just want to get to my danged discotheque.

Gauntlet’s down, MTA!

I’m on vacation for the next week, but since New York’s subways never shut down, neither will Second Ave. Sagas. I’ve enlisted the help of a few bloggers to help keep things fresh around here. Today’s guest post comes to us from Sarah Seltzer, keeper of The Egalitarian Bookworm (Chick?)… a friend of mine since we were three. Enjoy.

Greetings, fellow mass-transit users, and thanks to Ben for letting me guest blog. I’ve known him since the days we used retro bus passes, bronze and silver tokens, and colorful paper transfers to get to pre-K.

My topic today is only tangentially related to mass transport and the subways, but I thought I’d throw it out to the the savvy and urbane Second Ave. Sagas readership. The topic is: what the hell is happening to Manhattan?

The subways and stations are getting even more packed with briefcase-toting businesspeople. Every time I turn around, a new sleek high-rise condo block has moved in to an area that was previously derelict and run-down, bringing with it yet another Duane Reade, Starbucks, and six banks.

Strollers own the sidewalks everywhere from Tribeca to Harlem, and I’ve just learned, after sitting in at a community meeting for the West Side Spirit, some of the top public elementary schools are getting perilously overcrowded.

Obviously there are some big advantages to the gentrification wave. For one thing, as Ben has documented so assiduously, more riders going to formerly neglected neighborhoods has resulted in some public transportation service improvements, not to mention the renovation of some formerly decrepit stations.

But what about New York’s soul? I can’t help but fret that our entire city may be turning into one giant episode of the “Real Housewives of New York,” (which is a good show, but still…)

So my question is this: what do you guys see as the future of Manhattan (and parts of Brooklyn?) Is the condominium madness going to continue indefinitely, or will the slowing of the housing market outside finally allow the city to balance out these past years of growth?

And should we grumpy life-long New Yorkers just get over it and welcome our new neighbors and new landscape, or do we have a right to be concerned about the loss of our loveable urban grit and menacingly glare at the fresh-from-the-suburbs-yuppies across from us on the 1 train?

I’m turning it over to you, subway riders.

While the newspapers today are again plastered with negative stories about the MTA’s budget crisis, I found, this evening, a glimmer of hope in the New York City subway system. On my way back to Brooklyn from the Upper West Side, I came across crews in the 96th St. subway station preparing new signs promising expanding service.

In a few short days, despite looming fare hikes in 2009 and a bunch of miserly officials decrying the MTA’s budget problems (but more on them later), New York City Transit is set to expand service on a few popular subway routes. Among those lines is the 3 train, the 17.5-hour IRT line. Currently, as the old signs tell us, the 3 runs to New Lots Ave. except for late nights. Under the new service guidelines, everything changes:

The new signs, seen here resting against a pillar at 11:32 p.m. last night, promise added service. The 3 will now run all the time. During late nights from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. when the 3 used to lie dormant, trains will run from 148th St. to Times Square with connection available to the 2 train continuing on to Brooklyn. This is but one change designed to increase service along lines nearing or at capacity.

Oftentimes, these signage changes take place when no one is watching. Mysteriously and magically, the signs change, and the trains run at different times over different routes. Tonight, I was watching, and soon — perhaps later today? — the trains will run on new and better schedules.

As the subways and the MTA’s budget woes are about to face the gauntlet of public officials, it’s always fascinating to see the system changing and comforting to see the MTA working to improve service in dark days. Enjoy it will you can; who knows what tomorrow, next month or next year will bring.

Where: Don’t let the photo confuse you; that’s an N train, and it’s not an Atlantic Ave-Pacific St. Rather, it was en route to 14th St./Union Square on a Sunday night two weeks ago.

What: One very confused train (and, thus, some very confused passengers). On Sunday, June 29, at a time when, according to the service alerts, Brooklyn-bound N and R trains were supposed to be running over the Manhattan Bridge to DeKalb Ave., this train was suffering an identity crisis. With a W label affixed to its route map and the map itself stuck on Atlantic/Pacific since the time I boarded it at Times Square, the train did not know what to do. It didn’t run over the Manhattan Bridge; it wasn’t a W; and it couldn’t really handle all the confusion.

What good is new technology if it’s too hard to harness?

Two nights ago, I had the distinct pleasure of driving on some of the worst roads in the area. I had just dropped my parents off at the 4 terminal at Woodlawn so they could journey down to Yankee Stadium, and I had to get our car back to its garage on the Upper West Side. I scooted up the Mosholu Parkway to the Henry Hudson Parkway and drove that lovely road south to 96th St.

For years, that had been my ride back and forth to high school. It was where I cut my driving chops, and by the time I graduated from high school, I could ride that stretch of the Henry Hudson Parkway with my eyes closed (not that I, um, ever did that, mom).

But Sunday’s drive was something special. All around me, cars were driving aggressively. People were speeding, and those going to slow were glaring at the other cars zooming past them. People were switching lanes without signaling; they were speeding up to block other cars from moving in front of them. It was one of the more tense ten-mile drives I’ve ever taken, and I just chalked it up to the general chaos of the too-narrow Henry Hudson Parkway.

On the way back to Brooklyn a few hours later, I observed another odd moment. My 3 train heading down the West Side was largely empty, and those of us on the train had various bags and suitcases from Fourth of July weekends spent outside the cozy confines of the Big Apple. At 34th St., a few more straphangers toting suitcases boarded the train. At this point, most of the train was empty. I was sitting near the middle set of doors with my bags; a couple with their bags was across the aisle from me.

A few minutes later, at Park Place, a woman got on the train at the far set of doors, she walks past about 15 empty seats, audibly sighs and rolls her eyes while stepping over our suitcases before parking herself in front of the set of doors at the opposite end of the train car than those through which she boarded. She then de-trained at Fulton St., one stop later.

Every day, as I ride the train, I see more and more behavior like this. I see people who get flustered when asked politely to move out of the doorways because no one else can enter or exit the train. I see people taking up too many seats; I see healthy young riders ignore older and infirm riders who need a seat. And I hear music; I hear everyone else’s music at volumes so loud as to bother the rest of the train.

After the subway incident on Sunday night, I wondered if I hadn’t imagined a tougher ride down the Henry Hudson a few hours earlier. All around us, New Yorkers are retreating into their isolated worlds, and I wonder where this hostility comes from.

Sure, no one likes to spend more time than they need to on crowded train cars, stiflingly hot platforms or in traffic on the West Side Highway. But we’re all in this together, and if it means stepping over a few suitcases in an empty train car without making a production about, then do so. If it means turning down the iPod volume a few notches, then do so. We’d rather all be at our destinations, but don’t make the trips worse for everyone else. Let’s restore some decency and humanity to our roads and subways. Is that too much to ask?

Above: A sign from Tokyo urges subway riders to practice good riding etiquette. (Photo by flickr user French Disco)

The 7th Ave. station along the Culver line in Brooklyn has seen better days. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

A state of good repair. The MTA tosses that phrase around a lot these days, but no one really knows what it means.

New Jersey Transit defines it as follows: “‘State of Good Repair” is achieved when the infrastructure components are replaced on a schedule consistent with their life expectancy.” The MTA’s definition is, for all intents and purposes, the same.

In New York over the last twenty five years, the MTA has been fighting an uphill battle to return the subway system to a state of good repair. They’ve overhauled track beds and switches; they’ve purchased new rolling stock. And when time and money allows, they’ve attempted to redo stations, but it is here that we run into differing opinions over what exactly a state of good repair entails.

Over the weekend, Times reporter Javier C. Hernandez ventured out into some of the 19 stations that will see their renovation plans deferred. As expected, commuters who frequent those stations aren’t too pleased to hear that the MTA is forgoing outer-borough renovations yet again:

In the distance is one of the city’s most stunning views: the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan skyscrapers and a pristine New York Harbor. But the trip to the top of Brooklyn’s Smith-Ninth Street subway station, the highest in the city, is not so appealing.

Inside the station, scraps of paint fall from the ceiling as commuters make their way up cracked, rusty steps. “I’ve been waiting so long for things to change,” said Steven De Jesus, a contractor who commutes by train. He pointed to the peeling walls. “It’s horrifying and despicable right now.”

[snip]

The authority has said that the stations, which sit above ground on the D, N, F and G lines in Brooklyn and the No. 6 line in the Bronx, were in good condition and posed no safety risks. But commuters say the stations urgently need attention. At some stations, stairways are crumbling, water is leaking through the ceilings and outdoor roofs, and gaps between wooden planks are widening.

Therein lies the rub. The stations may post no safety risks, but anyone who subscribes to the City Beautiful notion of public works won’t be too pleased.

Above this post is one of a set of five photos I snapped a few weeks ago in the 7th Ave. station on the Culver line; one, two, three and four are all available on flickr. The truth is that this station — and many like it — is not in a state of physical repair. Dirty water has corroded station tiles, and streaks of something run down the walls. In some spots, the tiles are gone; in others, they’re buckling. It’s generally not very nice.

But when funds are tight, the station renovation plans get the axe, but these superficial appearances don’t matter nearly as much as modern signals and solid track beds. In the end, the MTA will face more complaints from people dismayed with the state of their surroundings, and as the stations grow grimier, they take on the appearance of something less than desirable in any neighborhood. But until money flows the MTA’s way, that physical part of the state of good repair will be the first thing to go when the budget crunches arrive.

We’ve had a busy week what with the MTA’s Board shenanigans and the forthcoming service enhancement plans. I’ve missed a few good blog posts in the interim. So let’s do it up, bullet-point style.

• Ephemeral New York, quickly rising on my list of new favorite blogs, remembers the subway token, five years after its demise.
• Pardon Me For Asking clues us in as to why MTA paint jobs at stations seem to move at glacially slow paces. (Related SAS posts here and here.)
• Check out the new-to-me blog The Daily Commuter. The writer is a fellow native New Yorker, and she spends over 90 minutes a day riding the MTA.
• Trainjotting wonders why a group is advocating Irish-language translations for subway signs.
• And heading outside of New York, check out Greater Greater Washington for some of the many urban challenges facing our Nation’s Capital. David Alpert burns a lot of pixels writing about the WMATA and the DC Metro.
• Kate Slevin at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s Mobilizing the Region blog suggests seven ways in which the MTA can start to restore some credibility. Her suggestions should be considered and implemented by an increasingly beleaguered transportation agency.