Did you ever walk into the subway station an notice that a lot of people (including yourself) are having trouble swiping through the turnstile?
I’ve seen it happen three or four times before, and had it happen to me.
We’re regular New Yorkers that swipe through the turnstile everyday without problem. Then all of a sudden, you try to swipe through just like any other day and you get the dreaded “Please swipe again at this turnstile.” You swipe again…nothing. Again…nothing. Then on the fifth or sixth try, it works. What the hell was that? It’s like you’re a clueless tourist or something.
That happened today, but it wasn’t just me. It seemed that people were having issues at all the turnstiles. We were all looking at each other like, “Are we being punked here?”
I mean, people were getting through, but it took everyone swiping a few times each.
SUBWAYblogger 
I’ve definitely had that happen before too. Almost a right of passage.
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I hate when this happens to me. It makes me feel like a tourist, and I hate feeling or looking like a tourist when I live in the Bronx.
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The turnstiles were dirty.The station agents on duty are supposed to use cleaning cards on each turnstile, including the high turnstiles and sometimes they don’t do it like they should for each tour of duty and even more frequently at high volume stations. If you were anywhere near Times Square or the surrounding area train stations, most of the turnstiles there had to be dirty with all those people using it on New Years eve and day. You also have revenue equipment maintainers who do routine preventive maintainence on those turnstiles to keep them working, that includes cleaning each turnstile. So if you have any problems swiping, i’ts probably do to dirt & dust. The same goes for when you are using your debit/credit card in the MVM machines, sometimes it won’t work because it is dirty.
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Man those turnstiles look scary! The turnstiles in Sydney are about waist height though they love to swallow (they’re feed-through rather than swipe) your ticket which means what seems like hours finding an attendant, and explaining what happened, before your ticket is finally retrieved.
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