Tag: station

Mailbag – MTA Please Fix Jay

subwayblogger4 Comments

Got this email today from a SUBWAYblogger reader.

I wanted to let you know about my blog – MTA Please Fix Jay.

It’s dedicated to the conditions at the Jay Street-Borough Hall subway station in Brooklyn.

There are a few issues to deal with at the station:

1. the interior condition is a disaster.  Riders deserve to commute in a clean station.  Jay Street epitomizes neglect and disrespect.

2. the condition of the MTA owned building above the station is a disaster and a waste of money.  There is a sidewalk shed that has been there for a decade.  In the midst of a budget crisis the MTA has a valuable asset that they have left vacant for a decade.

3. the lack of attention outside the station means that cars (MTA vehicles included) park in the bus stops, forcing buses to double park in bike lanes and forcing riders to board in the middle of the street.

The blog is sarcastic and a bit silly, but the points are serious ones.  The MTA must serve us better.

Obnoxiously Long Commute this Morning

subwayblogger1 Comment

Wow did it take for ever to get to work this morning.

There were some pretty significant delays on the 1 train last night because of signal problems at 96th Street.  The trains were running excessively slow.  At one point, it took 10 minutes just to get to the next stop.  We were rolling the whole time, but at a pace that I could have matched on foot without breaking a sweat.

So this morning, I don’t know if they were still recovering or what.  There were huge gaps between trains.  The trains themselves ran quickly when they finally arrived.

Then there was the largest single travel group I’ve ever seen trying to board the train.  On the Upper West Side, there are a lot of less expensive boutique hotels, so groups of foreign travelers (and students) often stay there.  So you see the groups of them all the time.  Sometimes they can get large, but nothing like this.

There had to be over 150 of them.  Mostly they seemed to be around 18 years old.  I couldn’t make out where they were from.  They sounded sort of Dutch?  I don’t know.  What I do know is there was a ton of them.

Any other day when there are delays like this, the train arrives at the station packed to the gills.  Only 2 or 3 people are able to get on at each doorway, even though there are lots of people waiting at the platform.  So then, throw in this mass of tourists, and you’ve got complete insanity.

They’re still probably standing there waiting to get on.  There’s absolutely no way they were getting more than 10 of their people on a train at a time.  Of course, none of them wanted to do that.  They looked like they were just going to keep waiting until a virtually empty train came along.  Good luck with aaaallll that.