The Institutional Obfuscations of the Railroads and Public Transport in General

Web Page Contents:

TRANSPORTATION New York Subways Buses AMTRAK Commuter Railways Ocean Liners Airlines & Airports Ride the Whole NYC Subway System

NEW (Feb 1998): An attempt to ride the entire NYC Subway system in one day.

From the first days of the steam railways (when was it, 1826 or something like that?), there has been a Masonic-type attitude of public transport employees toward the cattle they service. [It's OK if you know the secret handshake, otherwise it's F--- You]. The mentality has probably existed for as long as there was any public transportation from ancient Rome up to the time of the first scheduled runs of the stage-coaches of the 18th century, when 'progress' started to happen and Hobson's Choice gave way to "it's beyond our control" Cases in point, using the New York City Transit Authority as a model:

• "This train is being held by Supervision. We will be moving shortly." (Notoriously at Jay Street (HQ), where the trainee schedulers sit all day doing nothing except hold up trains that are already late in the sense that you had to wait 20 minutes for one to come in the first place. (This ALWAYS happens when you are in a hurry to get somewhere.)
  
  
• Stalled between or in stations: "We will be moving shortly. Thank you for your cooperation." [WHAT cooperation? I haven't done anything to cooperate--just sat there fuming.] Eventually, if you luck out, you will hear a message about a police action at such and such a place, or a sick passenger, or G-train ahead of us, or flooding on the X-line tracks. That doesn't get the train moving...
  
  
• Have you ever noticed that there is usually some ass on a subway train who insists on standing in the door, blocking it, and looking up and down the platform for what....? Also, the folks, not just the panhandlers and muggers, who systematically persist on getting out and moving to another car at every station (and also the ones who keep trying the doors between cars, even when as on the IND lines, they are always locked)? Moving between cars, except when you are looking for a seat or avoiding the car with the smelly bum sprawled out in it, is very suspicious or at least neurotic behavior. I'm not blaming the MTA workers for this, however. There is a lot of babboonish behavior by the passengers themselves causing a lot of the problems.
  
  
• "There's another train right behind this one." Yeah, right! Also, the famous excuse "there is congestion ahead" (when there hasn't been a train before this one for at least 20 minutes). "We have a red signal" is another good one -- someone just popped out for a cigarette and forgot to change it to green.
  
  
• "Due to blah, blah [usually unintelligible] this train is being rerouted over the X-line." Naturally, the X-line doesn't go anywhere near where you want to get off. You never hear this message of course until right before you hear "Stand clear of the closing doors" announcement. Then all the people outside start cramming in from the platform as though they hadn't heard anything for the last ten minutes and then hold open the doors for some reason or other, so it's another 5 minutes wasted. (Is this Q-train really an F-train? Well, you jerk, they just spent the last 10 minutes saying it was a Q running on the F line. Does that mean I can reach my station? Well, I'm not sure.)
  
  
• "This train will be going express to Z-street." This happens when service is really backed up, hence they are trying to get things moving faster. So of course it takes 10 minutes sitting there listening to the same announcement over and over again while the passengers decide whether or not they want to be on this train (more door-blocking, etc.).
  
  
• Public address systems: notoriously unintellible, except when they are announcing something totally banal (and blasting your ears out with the volume) like "Don't stand too near the edge of the platform," "Don't leave your valuables behind on the train," and my favorite, "Please stand clear of the moving platform while trains enter or leave this station." Do they think we are all idiots? Are they protecting themselves from lawsuits? (Hardly matters, since anyone can successfully sue the City anyway -- remember that guy who tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a train, then got big bucks because he happened to survive minus a leg or two? What was his problem, and why did the jury buy it -- that the transit system is so bad it couldn't even kill him properly, maybe the driver put on the brakes too soon?)
  
  
• The smelly car: Every now and then a very crowded train will pull into the station. Doors open and you find the car in front of you almost empty Why is this car empty? You enter and are hit with an unbelievable stench. It is the bum sprawled along the middle seats, who smells like days-old road kill, who might actually be dead for all you know. People giggle and make gagging gestures and just transfer to another car at the next station. I have seen transit cops roust winos and trippers, but never one of these really smelly ones (I guess they are afraid to touch them -- I would be). These people are revolting, but it's also rather sad, because they have gangrenous feet and nobody is doing anything about it.
  
  
• Personal Gripe: I can see the point of it, but why in hell do they have to hold up a train at great inconvenience to everybody, or even take it out of service, just because somebody fainted in the last car or had a purse snatched in the first? My attitude is that if somebody has a heart attack, they should be carried out onto the platform, the conductor should notify the EMS, and the train should just continue on. Is that callous? Don't really think so. People have collapsed on crosswalks in front of Macy's, but that doesn't stop the traffic much (a fender-bender on the Jersey Turnpike will cause a massive jam-up; however, this is New York and New Yorkers don't rubberneck unless there is something really odd going on). A pursesnatcher or mugger of course is long gone already.
  
  
• NEW: MetroCards vs Tokens: Just watch your mobs trying to get through the turnstiles when they hear a train coming -- damn things don't work (or people don't use them the right way, or the money has run out on them) and somebody is blocking your entrance when you would just rather push them under the barrier or kick them in the ass -- get out of my way! The MetroCard is a good idea, but there are many flaws in it, whereas a token (if you have one) is so straightforward -- it either goes right in, or you put a nickel in by mistake and jam up the machine. (However, you should keep the latest version of tokens in a separate pocket, since they are no longer large, colored differently, pierced by Y-shaped holes, or otherwise readily distinguished from nickels/quarters.) Whatever they say, tokens should NEVER be eliminated, especially because of the rare subway users who only use the service once every 6 months, or tourists who only want to experience this one time -- what are you going to do with a MetroCard with two and a half rides left on it, especially since you will either not have it or it will have been demagnetized next time you need it (having been crushed in your hip pocket or inadvertently swiped through an ATM)?
  
  
• SUBWAY ADS: You used to have a nice selection of grotty ad panels -- Doctor Zizmore Dermatologist (Dr Jonathan Zizmore, with a complexion like a baby's bottom, and what a great name for a zit specialist!), Madam Zuleika's Palm Readings, Get Your High School Diploma Here at 'Can You Read This Academy', The Laval School for the Blind (director Sister Mary Alice or whatever, and she looks like she'd whack you even if you're blind), AIDS is SIDA in Spanish (you idiot), etc. At least this sort of thing kept you amused if you didn't have a book or a Post to read. Now the Transit Authority has gone into blitzkrieg licensing of the whole side of subway car to one sponsor, which first resulted in endless repetitions of the same sneakers ads, and is now an egregious display of the most pretentious twaddle you don't want forced on you this way (you now can't look anywhere without seeing their pretentious message unless you want to look at your fellow passengers -- the old ads were designed as an escape from dangerous eye contact -- these aren't). Too many Health Care ads: if they are so good why do they need to sightblast you with pregnant women and geriatric care? (Presumably, they don't provide health care to healthy people, which is why your medical plan sucks when you get sick out of the blue -- "4 am: my baby is sick -- Humana cares" -- well, if I got sick then it would be "who is your PCP?") Way too many designer jeans ads (egad, so many pictures of Kate Moss that you feel like you've lived with her for twenty years and know where every one of her moles is). And now all this stuff that looks like Internet Java Applets. Cigna, Audrey Cohen College ("Are you prepared for the next century?"), that awful laundry detergent thing (I have a mental block about remembering its name, but I have to keep my eyes diverted from the terrible typography and the 'nudity is not an answer, got to do LAUNDrY' picture). Then ABC Radio, Amani, Fila, etc. -- this is HORRIBLE stuff and in a way more intrusive than the TV ads in the last half hour of Saturday Night Live.

  Latest pretentious twaddle: the New York Life ads -- "COMPASSION is Sympathy Coupled with Action," for example -- what does that have to do with insurance? This, and similar trite sound-bytes, is posted all over the subway car superimposed on this very impressive picture of the home office tower with its gilded spire against a dark gray sky. Nice art job, totally irrelevant to subway riders, or actually irrelevant period. How can you tell from the ads that this company sells life insurance? Do you even care? How many people are going to rush out and contact a life insurance agent, especially since people avoid them like the plague and Jehovah's Witnesses?

Let's not badmouth just the subways -- look at the bus companies:

• More and more expensive tickets, less and less comfort. Reduced legroom between seats; broken or feeble reading lights; appalling toilet (if there is one); people playing boom boxes (or, almost as aggravating, using earphones where all you can hear is a loud "hsh, titty,titty,hsh,titty,titty,poosh,ta,ra" --if YOU can hear that much imagine what it's doing to their ears).
  
  
• The 'Express' bus that wanders all over the place before you get to where you want to go.
  
  
• Having to go without a cigarette for more than an hour or so. (Well, that's my problem, but it really does drive me up the wall.) The only recourse is to fall asleep, which I always do in buses anyway, there's just something about them. However, the seats are MOST unconducive to comfortable napping, and you feel like you need a chiropractor when you get off.
  
  
• NY City Buses (back to the MTA again): (a) you wait half an hour for a bus that's supposed to come every 10 minutes; (b) there are 3 more of them right behind it when it comes (half-empty); (c) everyone tries to get on the 1st one, so it takes several minutes just to pack them in (and there is ALWAYS a person who decides to get off at the last minute through the front door while new passengers are already coming in); and (d) Bus Stops that are sited by some perverse management type with a fancy title like Passenger Flow Analyst to always be on the 'this' side of a traffic light, so the light always turns red just as the bus is about to pull out of the stop--so much for staggered traffic lights. (Of course, the 'that' side is just as bad; the light turns red and you can't get off the bus until it turns green so the driver can drive the 10 yards to the stop.)

AMTRAK

• I hardly ever take it (nor does anybody else), so I can't say that much about it, but they do seem to have a lot of wrecks. A lot of retired people ride AMTRAK to Florida, Kansas, and wherever. Thirty years ago (this dates me), I used to take a lot of long-distance trains, and really loved them [I also used to go to England on vacation by ocean liner*] -- who says the modern world is better?

  * By the way, if anybody out there in the Internet happens to read this page, and has something to say about the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth (1), the Empress of Britain (out of Montreal up the St. Laurence to Liverpool, wow), the Nieuw Amsterdam, the France or the United States (actually forget which one I crossed on although I visited both to meet or see people off), the Rotterdam, or the Zuidercruis, please let me know. Those were the days....[Queen Mary was absolutely the best ship I was ever on.]

Long Island RR, MetroNorth, NJ Transit, North Shore Line (Chicago; now defunct), Chicago & Northwestern, Main Line (Philly), etc.

• What can one say? If you've ridden them, you know: Commuterville, except when you get out to the Hamptons area of Long Island, where the train becomes a locomotive. No smoking any more, so the cars you couldn't breathe in even if you were a smoker are gone. Now inveterate smokers crowd the areas between the cars, when they can get away with it. Amazing, though, how habitual such a commute becomes -- same conductors, same seat companions, same donut and coffee routine, same card games, etc. etc. Any event that breaks that up, such as the absence of this or that (passenger or providence) will be audibly commented upon.

Air Travel

• This is a very limited list. When trying to think of the absolute worst airline terminal I've ever been in, I am unable to decide! They are ALL horrible. The better ones are Greenville SC, Las Vegas, and San Juan PR (only because they had something else going for them apart from just being a transit point--Greenville has a nice bar overlooking the runway, and no loading ramps.) Newark is the best of the NYC-area airports, but that's not saying much. JFK is the pits.
  
  
• Gander, Newfoundland. Never really saw much of it, but have a soft spot in my heart for it, because it was conveniently there when the Lockheed Constellation I was on in 1959 nearly crashed in Labrador (otherwise this Web Site would not exist). However, this page is becoming too nostalgic, and the point of it is really to dump on the attitudes of transportation media personnel toward their customers. Let me say about this incident with the Constellation that the plane finally arrived in London 23 hours late and the airline (I think TWA, but don't want to be libelous) NEVER notified anybody about this, so London Airport was full of frantic families who had waited there all night expecting to meet people off the plane, and Heathrow in those days didn't have any convenient Ramada Inns nearby. This was sit-on-the-floor-all-night stuff for them (with all the bars closed).
  
  
• British Caledonian. A classic. Got to Heathrow airport in time for my flight back to NY after being off in wild Wales for a couple of weeks. Was told "Didn't you know BC stopped running any flights out of this airport? You should have called British Airways to confirm that your reservation was switched over to them." Uh, huh. It hadn't been, of course, and they were all booked up. So that was a sit-on-the-floor-all-night incident again (except I was the sitter this time).
  
  
• Laker. Same sort of deal... Remember poor old Freddie? The big carriers ganged up and screwed him. But they haven't been able to shoot down Branston (Virgin) yet.
  
  
• Lost Baggage. Has anyone who ever travelled by air a fair number of times not had this happen? Went back to an airport (Heathrow) a day later, and found my missing bag still going round and round on one of those luggage treadmills! (These days they probably would have tossed it into a tank of water as a suspected bomb.)

Gluttons for Punishment and Enlightenment:

All you want to know about New York and London Rail Transport Systems (which are the ones I know best). Some Links, and also a description of my latest attempt to "DO" the New York Subway System

NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY RESOURCES The Complete New York Subway Web Page (marvellous)
ABORTED or ABANDONED Lost Subway Stations of New York!
A HISTORY of the LONDON UNDERGROUND By Clive Feathers (very comprehensive)

MY ATTEMPT TO "DO" the TOTAL SUBWAY TREK

   Anybody who has lived here for a number of years and has had to trek out to some foreign neighborhood (by train because they know they will get drunk and can't drive back from there, and also can't afford a cab) for a party or wedding, etc. has experienced at least some of the 'obscure' subway lines. New York is a VAST city, but most of it is reachable by public transport. However, the arrival of a visitor from England (Tony), who had spent 14 months wandering up from Tierra del Fuego via every South American country by rail and bus (obviously a train buff) and had done every city's travel network, thoroughly, on the way, could not resist THIS one, i.e. try to ride every line on the system -- anyway it was an excuse to take off a day from work and attempt to ride every route (not hit every station) on the NYC subway system along with him and another train buff who claims to know everything about the New York Rail System (well, actually he seems to, and could point out every Long Island Railway cutting we crossed over and say when it was built), our women very more sensibly opting out and going shopping instead. (Given your drothers, would you rather go shopping or ride the rails? Give me the rails!)

The Goal? Ride every route to its end point (no requirement to stop at every station or ride or board every line passing the same way -- hence, using express trains is OK). Liberal rules. Also, central Manhattan can be left out, except for connections, because we have all been on those lines before. This is not a Guinness Book of Records undertaking.

The Plan? Start at 8 in the morning, from Prospect Park on the F-line, and do all of the subway routes. (Simple, we have subway maps; we don't plan, we wing it.) Point 1: This is way too late to start this sort of thing, although we did have sense enough to go in the opposite direction from the rush-hour traffic.

The Reality? Point 2: As rush-hour users normally, we don't realize that when you get to the outer reaches you have to wait 20 minutes or more for a train rather than 5. There is more time spent just waiting than actually travelling. This is when I take my cigarette breaks -- illegal, but there is nobody around to catch me doing it. After eight hours on trains, we had not passed into Manhattan and the Bronx, just Brooklyn and Queens, and we never even got to Bay Ridge or Astoria.

The Accomplishments? Coney Island (piece of cake). Franklin Ave shuttle from Prospect Park to Bed Stuy -- the pits. The Rockaways (nice views, nice weather, because it was sunny and upper forties in February instead of sleeting and raining -- but turned out a disaster for our timing, taking up about two hours, and our English friend insisted we backtrack a couple of times to include the Lefferts Blvd, Rockaway Park, and Far Rockaway terminals for completeness's sake, and the same gulls and geese were perched in the same places at each pass-by).

Branched off to Canarsie on the "L" line, were starving, and got off -- we hadn't vowed to do the whole thing on one token -- to have a lousy lunch at a place that had all kinds of specials advertised: Fish & Chips, Macaroni & Cheese, etc. and they were all out of that: Cheezabugger, Pepsi, you know? and fried chicken. [Well, that's out of the way on my check list -- I have been to Canarsie finally, and never have to go back there again unless somebody gets married there, and now I at least know where it is.] Point 3: Don't depend on finding any 'decent' food when you get to an end of the line, which would seem like a good time to take a break (but of course you will have to take breaks along the way unless you have a steel bladder -- the Transit Authority does not provide bathrooms any more, so forget about doing this thing of riding the whole system on one token.) Note: On the way back from Canarsie, I spotted a falcon flying up the line with a rat in its beak. A flash, so they didn't see it and don't believe I did.

Then the "J" line out to Jamaica, through some places that didn't look like they were part of New York at all -- god, there are 8 million people in this city, and half of them spend their lives not going into the 'city' at all: Outer Queens/Brooklyn is that sort of area that might as well be in West Virginia as here, although West Virginians would consider it too 'citified'. NYC Subways are an education in that way, especially the elevated open-air lines outside of Manhattan -- you see areas of this vast conurbation that don't really give damn-all about what is happening in that skyline place that you can see in the distance even from the Jamaica Bay causeways (good views, by the way, some nice photo ops of wharfside houses on wooden stilts with the World Trade Center in the distance, but I didn't bring a camera).

Point 4: Avoid the trains about 3 in the afternoon when the schools let out. You will find yourself surrounded by very noisy kids -- intimidating and foul-mouthed boys and sexy nubile blank-minded girls in short skirts (god, don't you love it when they sprawl their legs that way?). Rather not dwell on that. It was, by the way, the only incident on this trek -- no panhandlers, only one preacher mouthing incomprehensible nonsense interminably (on the Lefferts Blvd line), a couple of derelict nut cases, a screamer at Franklin Ave -- but the incident on the F was some guy rabitting on at us about the school-girls, saying at the top of his voice that all they cared about was rock stars and blow-jobs -- and this was an Indian gentleman no less -- you never know in New York.

After Jamaica, it is the "E" and "F" back to the City, the main commute to work for thousands of people, and here it goes underground again. Boring. At this point, our English friend had an attack of the shitsus and had to run off the train -- good luck finding a public loo out there, or anywhere in New York, so rest of the team took a short cut home, not even attempting to do the Bronx and Manhattan trains. Eight hours, and probably not more than a third of this vast system traversed. We take the "G" train home, which is the only line (not a shuttle) that does not traverse Manhattan at some point. Point 5: Notoriously one of the worst lines in the subway system, going through the depths of Brooklyn/Queens through an interminable number of stops that you've never heard of. The best and cleanest and fastest of any of the lines we have ridden today.

The English guy didn't show up at the bar later, so we assume he went on to close out a few more terminal stations. We will know in a day or two, if he ever 'returns from the MTA'. (He was heading off to Philadelphia with the next day to do the same sort of thing, but we don't know if he made it or not.)

[Turns out he got back about 9:30, and yes, he did do some more travelling.]

Having started this nonsensical project, I will continue it in the spring. The Bronx and IRT lines and so on. Not trying to set a record in timing or number of individual stations the trains actually stopped at, but I think I am obliged to complete this project because I have lived here for nearly 30 years and have never done it (nor Statue of Liberty or Rainbow Room or Empire State Building -- although I went there daily once for six months of job training, in the basement, I never went to the top). Note: If you want to try this yourself, it's not as boring as it sounds -- I brought a book, but didn't open it, just read the New York Post from beginning to end and did the crosswords and word puzzles, also a bit of a marathon. There is plenty to see once you get on the elevated tracks sections, and a sense of a vast community cohabiting your area that you have no inkling about. The city is bloody HUGE, but we all live in neighborhoods, which is how we survive in such a densely populated place.

Next schemes are to take care of that Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn (R,B,N) and also take care of that boring bit of mid-Brooklyn (J,M,L). And also the "7" Astoria line. The IRT lines (the ones that use numbers) will be a totally separate all-day project; that will handle the Bronx, and maybe we can even get our wives to come on that one, since we can toss in the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Gardens (leave 'em there while we head out to Dyre Ave., Pelham Bay, Woodlawn and Wakefield). Van Cortlandt Park on the IRTcan wait until we finish up the "A" line (which is also a good one for wives, because they can be dropped off at the Cloisters). Don't know about how the northern ends of the "D" and "C" will fit in, maybe just sidebars like Lefferts Blvd.

Simple. That should do it all. The Manhattan bits don't really have to be done, since we have done them already, and this project is only to achieve completeness, not establish some marathon record.

[Three days later. Tony finally showed up at the bar, and yes indeed he really had done the entire subway system -- including the Tooterville Trolley or whatever it's called in Staten Island. The only bit he missed was the rush-hour only connection at Broad Street on the "M" line. This will be taken care of before he flies back to London on Sunday. We had had few incidents in Queens and Brooklyn. He had quite a few hair-raising ones in the Bronx, including being the only white person on the train, encountering a staunch from a homeless man that emptied out the subway car, and witnessing a woman exit the train to pull down her knickers and pee on the platform then get stuck in the closing doors while still trying to pull them up again.]

PS: Don't want to gloat, but Tony missed that last little bit of NYCTA -- circumstances beyond control. Am I sorry he didn't do the whole thing? yes. Does this make me unhappy? no.

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Click here for a picture (80kb) from the City of York railway museum. These trains had style (at least if you travelled first class). And the steam engines were really works of art and power.

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