MTA Under Pressure

Remember the movie The Warriors? Or the classic love story Ghost? Remember the subway scenes? Graffiti was plastered on the train, garbage rolled across the floor and people in trench coats kept their hands deep in their pockets as they yelled at the invisible passenger next to them. Those days of subway horror are long gone, but a new kind of terror reigns. That terror is also known as the MTA. Ok, maybe I'm being a tad dramatic by referring to the MTA as some sort of tyrannical monster who plans on ruling the people with an iron fist. Yet I can't really find another source to blame besides the organization in charge of making sure the subways run efficiently. Subway construction, delays, express to local, local to express, there is no telling what kind of surprises the MTA has in store for me and the rest of New York.

As someone who rides the trains every day, and uses many different lines to get to work and whatnot, I experience my fair share of subway troubles. At this point I expect certain things from each subway line that I use on a daily basis. The 6 is pretty reliable, although a pain when it decides to run from 14 st Union Square all the way to Brooklyn Bridge express. The N is slow, unreliable yet nicely air conditioned. The B or D is pretty clutch, but always slow right before Columbus Circle. The 7 is great unless you have somewhere to be by a certain time. Knowing all these little nuances still doesn't mean I can predict everything. The weekends are particularly heinous since there's about half the number of trains running and they seem to switch up the lines completely. For those of us who work on the weekends, and that's a lot now thanks to this draining economy, it is still crucial to be able to rely on the trains to get us to work on time. Even when I leave an extra five-ten minutes earlier on the weekends, I still end up jogging past tourists to get to my job on time. According to this article recently posted on NY Times website http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/nyregion/with-weekends-not-sleepy-anymore-subway-faces-a-test.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2, there's about an 85% retention rate on the weekends depending on the subway line. That's a lot of commuters! I don't care if the MTA has greatly improved the quality of the subways since the 70s and 80s, I am paying for reliable services NOW. In 2011, we have the intellectual and physical means of creating a great subway system.

Services have gone down, prices have gone up. It's irritating. I wish I could boycott the system until it improves, but I need the system. Just like most New Yorkers, I don't have a great deal of time to spend trying to piss off the MTA. I have a job, and internship and a little bit of a life in between my responsibilities. On a daily basis, nothing runs smoothly, so it would be fantastic if the MTA could lighten my load a little and get me where I need to be on time, without having to tell me in the most passive aggressive tone, to "please be patient".