A rainbow-colored 7 train. (Photo by flickr user bitchcakesny)
On Saturday night, I hopped on an A train at Broadway/Nassau and found myself sitting on some hard-molded blue seats that looked out of place amidst the red and orange that dominated the rest of the car. It was not the first time I had seen these seats, and yet, I still wondered why Transit was going for a rainbow look.
Today, the Post reports on the new color scheme. It is, unsurprisingly, a cost-savings measure initiated by the MTA. Soon, all of the cars will feature these dull blue seats, and the vibrant reds and oranges will be but a memory. Tom Namako reports:
MTA workers who repair broken seats were told to do away with the old color scheme in favor of the newer gray-blue on nine lines: the 1, 3, 7, B, Q, D, W and two shuttles.
The idea was to cut costs by saving on the amount of paint that has to be bought — and to save time by not having to use masking that creates the white trim on the older car seats, said NYC Transit spokeswoman Deirdre Parker.
The newer color matches the seat scheme on the latest subway cars, like those used on the N and L lines. Ideally, the entire subway fleet will eventually feature those cars or similar ones. “They’ll be repainted this color forever,” said Charles Seaton, of NYCT.
Namako did not report just how much money the MTA would be saving on these seats, but in this age of little transit investment, any money saved is good money. Meanwhile, as the new R160s and R142s no longer feature different colored subway bullets and the colored seats are going the way of the dodo, the subways are losing another part of their colorful identity. How blue that makes me.
At 5 a.m. this morning, the 1 train will roll into 181st St. and open its doors at the platform for the first time since the ceiling at this 103-year-old station collapsed on August 16. Work, however, is far from over on this station and the one at 168th St. 
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. 