Bring your swim fins

April 16, 2007 subwaybloggerLeave a comment

Trade your power suit for a wetsuit. Leave your loafers at home, and take your fins. You’ll be much better off.

There’s water on the tracks all over. I just heard an announcement that there’s water on the tracks in the Bronx, so uptown 3 trains will terminate at 96th Street. Glad I’m not on that line.

My train seems to be running at half speed. It pulls in and out of the stations very slowly. At one point there were people walking faster on the platform than the train.

Walking down the first flight of steps from street level, I was greeted by 4 inches of water at the bottom. Tried to jump it, but just barely missed. Squishy shoes for me today. Yay.

I’m looking around at people on the train and many don’t have umbrellas. What the hell are you thinking people? 7 or so inches of rain in Central Park yesterday wasn’t hint enough that maybe this storm requires more than a wind breaker?

Live from the subway, back to you in studio…

Bloomberg Calls for New Yorkers to Ride Mass Transit Today

April 16, 2007 subwaybloggerLeave a comment

Mayor Bloomberg

Late in the evening (within minutes of posting this), Mayor Bloomberg’s office released a statement urging New Yorkers to use mass transit in the morning. He wants to keep as many cars of the road as he possibly can.

Yikes.

If you turned on the news overnight, you saw roads under water all over the place. Hoboken is swimming, but hey, now the ferry can pull right up to your building!

The LIRR is already seeing water get too close to the tracks for comfort. Westbound tunnels into Penn Station are also looking like they are going to flood.

And then there’s the subway. There’s guaranteed problems all over the place. However, you won’t know about most of them until you are already well on your way to work. The MTA isn’t exactly speedy then it comes to publicly reporting transit delays. It usually takes a pretty significant outage for it to make it on the MTA website.

Flooded Tracks + Potential Power Outages + More Passengers (thanks to Bloomy’s request) = a hell of a morning commute. Oh, and it’s still going to be raining. 😦

Service Problems? Let us Know!!

April 15, 2007 subwayblogger1 Comment

Well, if you have eyes, you can see that the weather is complete crap today. There’s going to be tons of flooding, especially in the subway tunnels.

So, let us know in the comments section of this post if you experience any service delays while out and about today. We will post them all here. Everyone knows that the MTA site is stupidly slow when it comes to posting alerts, so we will have to rely on eachother.

Why the style years in advance?

April 13, 2007 subwayblogger2 Comments

The MTA has released renderings of potential subway entrances along the Second Avenue line. They look pretty cool. I’d settle for a boring industrial look if it meant spending less money on this project, but whatever.

Anyway, the subway line isn’t going to be done for what….10 or more years at least? So why would you mock up something as trendy as this so early in advance? Who knows that will be the style a decade from now?

Maybe by then, the abstract, idustrial look will be out. Or maybe there will be better technology that would allow a cooler look.

Anyway, should we be picking out the wall paper and paint colors just yet? Or would it be better to wait unil…ohhh…a year or two before the project is done?

Nor Easter On Sunday

April 13, 2007 subwayblogger1 Comment

Seriously? It’s not expected to be of the snow variety, but there’s tons of rain expected. 50 MPH winds too.

That will make for a lovely Sunday night/Monday morning subway commute. Usually, a little rain doesn’t cause too many delays. A ton of rain, however, will mess things up all over.

The system will be in the midst of swithing from light weekend service to regular weekday service. So, there will already be fewer trains rolling when the storm begins. Flooding then usually causes poweroutages. So getting the weekday trains back online will probably be slow.

Long story short, your Monday morning commute has major f **k-up potential.

Live from the subway, back to you in studio…

Ok, Second Ave Line is Off and Running

April 12, 2007 subwayblogger1 Comment

Ok fine, SUBWAYblogger completely wussed out of going to the ceremony today. It ended up that it was inside the previously existing subway tunnel, so it was out of the rain.

It still sucked that they were requiring the press to arrive at 9am for a 10:30am event. That’s a little lame.

But I did get to watch it on NY1, so that was cool (and dry).

I wish I had thought of live blogging the ceremony like Jenn at Gothmist did. The rain must have washed away my creative juices 🙂 .

Example:
10:30: No groundbreaking ceremony yet. The MTA is already behind schedule on the 2nd Avenue Subway! Clearly a sign of things to come!

So over all, the ceremony wasn’t that exciting. Still would have been cool to be there to video tape it. Maybe I’ll attend when the first train runs down the line.

Second Ave Subway: You’re on Your Own

April 12, 2007 subwaybloggerLeave a comment

In light of this morning’s driving rain, SUBWAYblogger will not be attending the ground breaking for the Second Avenue line. Hell, they may have even postponed it, who knows.

They were requiring that the press check in by 9am for the ceremony that wasn’t supposed to start until 10:30am. Screw that! I’m not standing around for an hour and a half on a dry day let alone in the pouring rain.

Instead, there’s plenty of other news to cover in the city. Sharpton’s attempt to remain politically relevant outside CBS, Bill Clinton will be at an event downtown, Arnold Swartzenegger (sp?) will be giving a speech in the city today, and the elephants are going to cruise the floor at MSG. So, there’s plenty of “less wet” news to cover.

Unfortunately, none of it is subway related. Boooo.

Live from the subway, back to you in studio…

Second Ave Subway: You’re on Your Own

April 12, 2007 subwayblogger2 Comments

In light of this morning’s driving rain, SUBWAYblogger will not be attending the ground breaking for the Second Avenue line. Hell, they may have even postponed it, who knows.

Unfortunately, none of it is subway related. Boooo.

Live from the subway, back to you in studio…

2nd Avenue Subway: Here it comes!

April 11, 2007 subwayblogger1 Comment

Tomorrow is the ground breaking for the 2nd Avenue Subway! No seriously, it’s really happening.

There’s no stopping it now. The shovels hit the dirt…again. That’s right, again.

Back in 1972, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John Lindsay participated in a ground breaking for preliminary construction of a Second Avenue subway. That tunnel was planned to run from 101st to 120th. They even had more ceremonies in 1974 and 1975.

However, in 1975, the MTA ran short of funds after already spending $1.3 billion. That’s billion with a “B.” All work on the project stopped. Mayor Abraham Beame ordered the tunnel to be sealed in 1975.

So there Gov. Spitzer and others will stand in the site of the reopened tunnel to participate in tomorrow’s ground breaking (or is it re-breaking?).

SUBWAYblogger hopes to be on hand to witness the historic moment in person.

Sick of the cold and dreading the heat

April 10, 2007 subwaybloggerLeave a comment

SUBWAYblogger is officially OVER this cold weather, but dreading the heat. Yes, basically screwed either way.

The cold snaps are just getting old. I’m tired of having to wear bulky jackets. I’m especially tired of it because it’s too cold to not have a jacket on the street, but then it’s just warm enough to sweat your ass off in the subway.

Unfortunately, after it starts to warm up, it will only be a matter of a few days before the subway turns into an oven. So, it will go from sweating in a light jacket to sweating in your skin.

Gross.

Live from the subway, back to you in studio…