east village idiot

Last year, I signed up for the MTA’s Electronic Notification service, hoping it would advise me to stop being lazy and walk to Union Square instead of taking the L Train two stops. It had been working pretty well… until yesterday.

Here’s a picture of the inbox on my Blackberry, after receiving 33 text messages in 40 minutes from the MTA with the exact same text about a service alert on the L Train that had already expired earlier in the afternoon.

It’s a good thing I have an unlimited text plan. Sucks for the people who subscribed to this supposedly helpful service who don’t.

To whom it may concern: 

I am writing to you out of concern over a serious safety issue on the L Train platform at the 14th Street-Union Square. It has bothered me for several years, but after watching my life flash before my eyes this morning, I feel that I must raise my voice before lives are actually lost in this station.

As you are probably well aware, the L Train is severely overcrowded. With trains running at the line’s maximum capacity during rush hour already, nothing can be done to change this. While the trains generally run quite efficiently, 8th-Avenue bound trains are still filled the brim every morning during rush hour. Any hiccup in service causes trains to become overloaded, leading to crowds on platforms all along the line. At 1st Avenue this morning, hundreds of passengers were huddled around the area of the platform at the front of the train. With only one exit at this station, I can’t imagine that this is safe, and it most definitely exceeds any fire codes that would be set in most buildings. However, my concern is further west on the line; most of the L Train’s riders disembark at 14 Street-Union Square, and this leads to serious problems.

The L Train platform at Union Square has six stairways: two at the front of the train leading to an exit near 14th Street and University Place, two in the center of the train leading to the uptown and downtown N/Q/R/W platforms, and two at the rear of the train leading to the 4/5/6 platforms and an exit near 14th Street and 4th Avenue.

Typically, I try to board the L Train at the front, as the stairway at the front of the train never seems to be particularly congested. It is not that it is underused, but mainly because its two staircases funnel into an even wider staircase that can support the throngs of L riders transferring or exiting at Union Square. Alternately, I try to board the L Train at the rear. This set of staircases is generally quite crowded, as the staircases from the platform are narrow, but they open up into a much wider staircase that leads to the mezzanine level of the station.

However, neither of these staircases are particularly convenient for me, as I transfer at Union Square to the uptown N/Q/R/W Trains. There is one L-shaped staircase that leads directly to that platform from the L Train platform. This is what the area in front of this staircase looks like on any given morning, still roughly two minutes after a L Train from Brooklyn arrives at the station.

The crowd is often 15 to 20 deep, sprawling from all directions, and queueing in front of the staircase, beside the staircase, and even behind it. This crowd is not unlike the conditions inside an L Train on any given morning. But the means by which this crowd waits is what makes it particularly dangerous.

This morning, upon seeing this crowd, I decided I would try to walk up the platform to find a less congested staircase. The crowd waiting to ascend this staircase had become so large that it reached the edges of the platform. As I tried to bypass this crowd and move down the platform, other passengers decided to back out of the crowd to see an alternate route as well - without looking behind them. One of them ran into me, and I nearly lost my footing before grabbing onto one of the supports with my left hand. Had I actually lost my footing, I would have fallen into the path of an oncoming 8th-Avenue bound L Train that was about to enter the station.

These crowds have worsened significantly over the past few years and something must be done before someone gets hurt. Since I realize times are tight at the MTA, a simple stopgap solution would be to make these staircases “up-only” during rush hours, as the main reason for the congestion is one or two passengers trying to go down the same staircase that hundreds are trying to go up. Still, this would not be nearly as helpful as adding a second easement to these staircases, as demonstrated in red in my diagram below. This would allow for more “uphill” capacity and would, at the very least, clear the L Train platform of passengers more quickly.

I hope you will consider these proposals before someone is injured or worse by this overcrowding. As commuting patterns change and traffic continues to build on the L Train as gentrification continues in North Brooklyn, I hope the MTA realizes that adjustments must be made to make their customers’ rush hour experiences as safe as possible. Rush hour may still be hectic, but it should never be dangerous.

Regards,
Chris

 When I got to Union Square this morning, a Q train was waiting in the station and an R train was pulling in. My reaction, naturally, was to get on the Q train on the express track. But something seemed weird: the Q was pretty much empty. Something was up. While standing near the doorway of the Q, a rather large MTA employee - the conductor, out of his element outside of his little cab in the middle of the train, shouted into our train car, “you’re gonna wanna get on this R train! This train is gonna be here for a while.”

So, I darted across the platform for the uptown R train instead. I was thrilled that I had caught the conductor’s casual announcement and sat on the R with a smug look that I’d be beating all the suckers on the Q train to work.

But I should have known better than to heed the conductor’s advice. Like clockwork, when we reached 23rd Street, the next local stop, the aforementioned Q train blew right by us on the express track, to the frustration of my fellow passengers. By the time we got to 34th Street, the next express stop, that Q train was a distant memory, and we were the real suckers.

MTA Employees: using taxpayer money to provide false information to passengers since 1965.

If you need any more proof that dedicated bus lanes are necessary in this city, here’s a picture that should give you some good reason:

This is an M14 bus blocking two full lanes of traffic on 1st Avenue and the east crosswalk at the intersection. This forced pedestrians to literally walk down the middle of 1st Avenue to cross 14th Street. It also forced two M15 buses heading uptown to sit through an entire cycle of the light while this bus sat in the middle of the intersection.

Why was this bus loading passengers here? Because there were two empty cabs sitting in the bus stop zone, most likely loitering at a bodega on 14th Street.

If there was a lane specifically for the buses - or if the NYPD actually enforced the existing No Standing Zone at the bus stop at the height of rush hour - maybe the M14 wouldn’t rank among the slowest buses in the city.

This hastily-posted message was stuck on the wall of an 8th Avenue-bound L train this morning:

I’d hate to break it to this guy, but if there’s something in your backpack so worth getting back that you can offer a $5,000 reward, you’re probably not getting your backpack back. Even if you beg “please” three times.

Last night on my commute home, I had the most hoarse MTA conductor on a downtown R Train. The guy could barely get a word out without his voice cracking.

Poor guy. I’ve got to give credit where credit is due: you’d think most MTA employees are so lazy that they’d call in sick at the onset of a single cough. This guy is going above and beyond the call of duty!

“I feel so bad,” a woman next to me said. “I want to run down there and give the guy a cough drop!”

Eight months ago, Assembly Speaker and Manhattan Assemblyman Sheldon Silver blocked a committee vote on Congestion Pricing. Congestion Pricing would have reduced traffic in Manhattan to improve the speed of surface transit, and would have provided millions of dollars in Federal funding to keep the MTA afloat and expand public transit. Without Congestion Pricing, supporters warned, the MTA would face a fiscal nightmare, services would be cut, and fares would increase even more.

Today, the MTA is proposing a $3 base fare, a $105 monthly Metrocard, and severe cutbacks in service system wide, including eliminating two subway lines and 21 bus lines.

Just wanted to remind you.

With apologies to Andrew Sullivan, here’s a new feature of my blog, just for the hell of it.

14th Street-Union Square Station, 6:20pm.

From the New York Times’ City Room Blog:

One man, who identified himself as an Amtrak worker with the Bail Out the People campaign, spoke out against the budget plan, saying it should be “thrown into the garbage plan.” He asked, “Where is Elliot Sander? You made $300,000 last year!”

Saying “this shoe is for you,” the man bent over to take off his shoe — apparently in an effort to take off the shoe and, presumably, throw it at Mr. Sander, chief executive of the authority.

A president who destroyed the Constitution or a chairman of a public agency who proposed a $104 monthly Metrocard? It’s hard for me to decide who deserves it more.