Yes, that’s right. Stranded weekend 7 train riders in the outer boroughs can come celebrate St. Patrick’s Daywith the rest of us in Manhattan. The MTA has decided to officially resume weekend 7 train service just for the holiday weekend.
See the MTA’s 7 Train Service Page. It’s tiny, but it says that service will be normal March 17-19.
And in completely unrelated news, this might be the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. Thanks to AMNY Tracker for this…
If you were at the New Lots Ave stop of the L train at around 3am this morning, you probably saw a pretty ugly thing. Five people were arrested in connection with the stabbing and subsequent death of 20-year old Gerlin Collando.
Collando was stabbed multiple times in the chest. Allegedly, the argument that lead to the stabbing was the result of Collando dancing with someone else’s girlfriend at a party.
The suspects jumped onto a departing train, however, police held the train and caught up to the suspects at the next stop.
Now that the “hard” news is out of the way, let’s discuss…
How freaking scary would it be to find yourself stuck in a train car with the “suspects?” One thing that idiot criminals forget is that they can’t out run a radio. So, when police were called to the scene, they were able to radio for the train to be held. Thus, the train stopped, doors closed, with the suspects trapped inside.
Not a crew that SUBWAYblogger would like to be locked in with. There had to have come a point where the suspects knew that something was going on. They had to know that the train was stopped because of them.
Anyway, stopping the train gives police plenty of time to get set up at the next stop. At that point, there’s really no where else to run.
Just imagine sitting on that train. Out the window, you see this group of guys stab another guy. Then they run into the car that you are already sitting in. What do you do? Probably you just act like any other New Yorker, and act like nothing is out of the ordinary.
If you’re a regular F train rider, you’ve probably noticed that your commute has sucked the past few weeks. Why? Because your train never seems to come, and when it does, it is packed to the gills with people.
Where the hell did all these people come from? Nowhere. That’s because there arent actually any more people riding the train. It’s because there have actually been less trains operating on that line. Sweet.
There were 100 people already waiting for the F train when it pulled into the Seventh Avenue stop last Wednesday morning.
But the train was almost entirely packed by the time it showed up, and only a handful of commuters was able to get on.
Again, SUBWAYblogger says welcome to the conversation. We’ve been saying this about various lines for quite some time now.
Return to normal? Uhhh nope
Thursday, September 21st, 2006
Service cuts come early?
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
You might recall that SUBWAYblogger live-blogged our own little adventurewhere we had to claw our way onto a train. We had a very similar situation where train after train came by where only a dozen or so of the 100 people waiting could fit on the train. It was fuuuun.
The MTA just needs go get more trains in service. That’s it.
Hopefully, the MTU won’t screw things up. Why? Because one potential solution are the fully automated cars (or partial automated). They are capable of running trains closer together than trains operated by humans. This means you could fit more trains on the line, closer together. That would increase the train frequency and alleviate the crowding.
And yes, we know the headline was a little too easy. Sorry about that.
(ok, so this isn’t one of the platform signs, but it is still really funny.)
So the New York Times went underground to do some of the hard-hitting investigative reporting that they are known for. They sent a reporter, armed with a stop watch, into the subway system to ride the L trains and test the monitors.
Turns out, they were accurate! The times reflected on the boards actually synched up with when the train arrived. What a concept!
On this day, however, the signs worked like a charm. A stopwatch revealed that the trains came and went as predicted. It was almost unnerving.
Agreed.
However, since it is an MTA operation, there had to be a slight flaw. To accompany the electronic boards, the system incorporates a prerecorded voice that announces the arrival times. On this occasion, the announcements sounded like the techno remixed version.
“The next train will arrive, will arrive, will arrive.” But hey, at least something about them is working. That’s more than can be said for the boards in the past.
From the AP/MTA:
A city councilman doesn’t like the shut-down of the Number Seven subway that will affect parts of Queens and Manhattan for the next five weekends. The Seven train will be out of service this holiday weekend between the 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue stop in Queens and the Times Square stop in Manhattan. The shut-down will last from just after midnight Saturday until 5 a-m Tuesday. The shut-down will be repeated Saturdays through early Mondays for the following four weekends.
Passengers can take other subway lines or shuttle buses.
Councilman Eric Gioia says the shut-downs are hard on Queens residents who depend on the Seven line to get to work on weekends.
An M-T-A spokesman says the agency recognizes the inconvenience, but needs to do the work to keep the subway system reliable.
The first real snow of the season might be just around the corner. Will the subway hold up? NYC Transit Spokesman Paul Fleuranges says YES. But haven’t we heard that before?
You might not think that snow could do anything to the subway, but you would be wrong. The subway is exposed to surface level weather at many points. So, anywhere the trains run above ground can be overrun with snow! We all know that once there is a bottleneck in one area, the entire line suffers.
Believe it or not though, the MTA has snowblower trains and anti-ice trains to clear the tracks. Who knew? They even run trains empty to keep the rails from freezing.
“Underground service isn’t affected, and elevated service is for the most part ok due to constant running of trains keeps rails free of ice etc,” says Fleuranges.
But that wasn’t really the case during the blizzard last year. There were lots of service disruptions. So I guess the bottom line is you should play it safe and leave extra commute time on Wednesday morning. 6-10 inches of snow, wind, freezing rain, ice…mmm it’s gonna be fun.
Joseph Weir, 23, was sentenced to four months in prision for sucking the feet of female subway riders. I guess that’s fair. He’ll have four non-stop months of big, hairy man feet to suck. That’s justice served, right?
I know, I know…back up, and tell the story.
Ok, so this guy spent the last three years going up to random women on the subway. He would grab their feet and suck on them while saying, “I’m not worthy.” Yeah, gross. Sometimes shoes on, sometimes not. We would assume that there was more direct toe contact in the summer with sandals and all.
Anyway, he was finally caught and now he’s off to prison. Plus plenty of probation and fines.
Bravo TV, the new home of “Top” everything, has joined up with the MTA to promote its latest reality program, Top Design. Designer Jonathan Adler is one of the show’s judges. In a strange promotional move, the show has set up three fully designed rooms on the shuttle subway platform (aka the “S” train platform) at the Grand Central end of the line.
Smack in the middle of the long concourse, there you will find living rooms complete with carpets, furniture, and accessories now through February 7th.
The MTA even did a TransitTrax podcast on the new show.
Available soon from City Hall: an official New York condom in a jazzy wrapper, perhaps one printed with a colorful subway map or some other city theme.
That’s right, the city rubber is almost here. We blogged about it a few weeks back, and honestly forgot all about it. Heck, who thought it would actually happen. As noted above, some wrapper themes might include subway stuff.
Here’s our idea:
Wrappers: Mark them with the subway line icons. You know, the big red circle with a 1, 2, or 3 on them for the red line. Have one version for all the lines, that way everyone in town has a connection.
The condom: Then, make the actual condom look like a train!!! Think about it…go ahead. Close your eyes. Get it? When the condom gets rolled out, it will look like a meat train. How awesome would that be? This train is headed “downtown.”
They’d sell out of these bad boys in a week.
SUBWAYblogger stumbled across something a little strange. People are selling their old subway tokens on eBay. Is that strange?
They are being sold as collector’s items in some cases. It hasn’t been that long since the MTA stopped using tokens.
Some of the sets are cool though. Apparently there are bigger transit geeks than SUBWAYblogger out there. Some people have entire collections of tokens starting back to the very first set released up to them most recent. There’s a set of 10 tokens with a high bid of $41.00. There’s even someone that is selling 100 bull’s-eye tokens with a bid of $202.00!! (if you go looking for this one, it only had 23 minutes left as of this posting).
You’d be surprised at all of the subway related goodies for sale on eBay. You can even buy parts of old trains!
SUBWAYblogger 