Kris
February 18th, 2003, 03:20 PM
February 18, 2003
It's Your Subway's Dowdy Sister
By RANDY KENNEDY
LONDON, Feb. 17 — The next time you grow surly about New York City subway service, consider using a subway in which the following takes place:
¶Two train lines (the equivalent of, say, the A and the L) are taken completely out of service, one for weeks, after a derailment caused when a loose motor somehow falls from the bottom of a speeding train. ("Motors don't fall off without a reason," says a spokeswoman, helpfully. "We are identifying possible reasons." )
¶On a busy Thursday morning, signaling problems cause 7 of the city's 10 remaining subway lines to experience serious delays and shutdowns.
¶Even when most lines are running well, they can become so dangerously crowded that station workers, like gangs of embattled prison guards, pull accordion gates closed and bar the entrances.
¶Breakdowns are such a routine part of everyday travel that few riders even seem to bother growing angry about them, instead wearing looks of pained resignation. "I suppose they're used to it, really, by this time," said Gary Fraser, a station superintendent, adding, "It doesn't do them much good to get angry, now does it?"
Apparently not, because if it did, even Londoners — whose diffident anger is sometimes hard to detect by a visiting New Yorker — would undoubtedly be screaming about the state of their subway. While it can claim the distinction of being the world's oldest, it is no longer even close to being the world's best.
Spending a few days aboard it to compare it to the New York City subway is a fascinating, harrowing and hilarious exercise in transit system sociology. In many ways, the two subways are like sisters — one rude, ungainly and serious of purpose, the other more proper and petite but very much on the flighty side.
If you had been sitting on the Circle line of the London Underground one day last week, you would have had a hard time telling the two apart. The train's windows were marred by scratched graffiti. The announcements were hard to hear and the traditional subway conductor's warning — "Staicleeclusndoes" — was well slurred.
Inside the train, there was a familiar unwashed odor, which belonged to a man with his fly half-unzipped, surrounded by greasy McDonald's hamburger bags. As he conducted an intense private argument, thumping himself on the forehead, a well-dressed hipster across from him, reading Umberto Eco, shot him lethal looks.
Roberta Bowie, 17, and Peter Crowley, 16, who were making out — or snogging, as the British say — on the platform at the King's Cross St. Pancras station, said there were actually many similarities between the two systems. Like the subway, the tube is plagued with pole huggers, those who stand inside crowded trains and selfishly take up all of the hand space on the vertical support poles. It also has door blockers, who willfully stand in open train doors, forcing people to shove past them. "Sometimes," Ms. Bowie said, wide-eyed, "it gets quite violent."
But just when one might start to believe that a subway is a subway is a subway, the differences slowly become apparent — some tiny, but many profound. For example, instead of metal straps for holding on, some London trains have an apparatus that looks like a small black light bulb, which is not as easy to grip in a swaying train and certainly does not lend itself to a decent name for those who use it — straphangers, yes, but bulbhangers?
The tube's smallest train cars are also curved inward toward the top, meaning that if you are tall, there is a chance in a crowded train that you will get your head caught in the closing doors. Asked if he had seen this happen to people, a platform conductor smiled a big toothy smile and said, "Aw yeah, loads."
In other areas, however, there are vast improvements over the New York subway. There are electronic signs that tell riders, to the minute, when the next train will arrive. There is an intercom system that a live human being actually answers. There are vending machines on most platforms that sell a dozen delicious varieties of Cadbury chocolate candies.
And finally, there is a true cultural divider between the two train systems — the intelligible signs throughout the tube that apologize profusely for poor service and explain exactly what went wrong. Try to imagine having subway problems in the morning and seeing a long printed sign by evening, entitled "This morning's poor service" in which a top transit official writes, "I am very sorry that so many of you experienced difficulties on your journeys to work this morning" and adds that repairs "are taking longer than we originally thought."
At the Camden Road tube station one evening last week, Priyesh Shah, a dentist, agreed that this was undoubtedly the height of civilization.
Then, with what almost appeared to be an angry look, he added: "But apologies don't fix the trains, now do they?"
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
It's Your Subway's Dowdy Sister
By RANDY KENNEDY
LONDON, Feb. 17 — The next time you grow surly about New York City subway service, consider using a subway in which the following takes place:
¶Two train lines (the equivalent of, say, the A and the L) are taken completely out of service, one for weeks, after a derailment caused when a loose motor somehow falls from the bottom of a speeding train. ("Motors don't fall off without a reason," says a spokeswoman, helpfully. "We are identifying possible reasons." )
¶On a busy Thursday morning, signaling problems cause 7 of the city's 10 remaining subway lines to experience serious delays and shutdowns.
¶Even when most lines are running well, they can become so dangerously crowded that station workers, like gangs of embattled prison guards, pull accordion gates closed and bar the entrances.
¶Breakdowns are such a routine part of everyday travel that few riders even seem to bother growing angry about them, instead wearing looks of pained resignation. "I suppose they're used to it, really, by this time," said Gary Fraser, a station superintendent, adding, "It doesn't do them much good to get angry, now does it?"
Apparently not, because if it did, even Londoners — whose diffident anger is sometimes hard to detect by a visiting New Yorker — would undoubtedly be screaming about the state of their subway. While it can claim the distinction of being the world's oldest, it is no longer even close to being the world's best.
Spending a few days aboard it to compare it to the New York City subway is a fascinating, harrowing and hilarious exercise in transit system sociology. In many ways, the two subways are like sisters — one rude, ungainly and serious of purpose, the other more proper and petite but very much on the flighty side.
If you had been sitting on the Circle line of the London Underground one day last week, you would have had a hard time telling the two apart. The train's windows were marred by scratched graffiti. The announcements were hard to hear and the traditional subway conductor's warning — "Staicleeclusndoes" — was well slurred.
Inside the train, there was a familiar unwashed odor, which belonged to a man with his fly half-unzipped, surrounded by greasy McDonald's hamburger bags. As he conducted an intense private argument, thumping himself on the forehead, a well-dressed hipster across from him, reading Umberto Eco, shot him lethal looks.
Roberta Bowie, 17, and Peter Crowley, 16, who were making out — or snogging, as the British say — on the platform at the King's Cross St. Pancras station, said there were actually many similarities between the two systems. Like the subway, the tube is plagued with pole huggers, those who stand inside crowded trains and selfishly take up all of the hand space on the vertical support poles. It also has door blockers, who willfully stand in open train doors, forcing people to shove past them. "Sometimes," Ms. Bowie said, wide-eyed, "it gets quite violent."
But just when one might start to believe that a subway is a subway is a subway, the differences slowly become apparent — some tiny, but many profound. For example, instead of metal straps for holding on, some London trains have an apparatus that looks like a small black light bulb, which is not as easy to grip in a swaying train and certainly does not lend itself to a decent name for those who use it — straphangers, yes, but bulbhangers?
The tube's smallest train cars are also curved inward toward the top, meaning that if you are tall, there is a chance in a crowded train that you will get your head caught in the closing doors. Asked if he had seen this happen to people, a platform conductor smiled a big toothy smile and said, "Aw yeah, loads."
In other areas, however, there are vast improvements over the New York subway. There are electronic signs that tell riders, to the minute, when the next train will arrive. There is an intercom system that a live human being actually answers. There are vending machines on most platforms that sell a dozen delicious varieties of Cadbury chocolate candies.
And finally, there is a true cultural divider between the two train systems — the intelligible signs throughout the tube that apologize profusely for poor service and explain exactly what went wrong. Try to imagine having subway problems in the morning and seeing a long printed sign by evening, entitled "This morning's poor service" in which a top transit official writes, "I am very sorry that so many of you experienced difficulties on your journeys to work this morning" and adds that repairs "are taking longer than we originally thought."
At the Camden Road tube station one evening last week, Priyesh Shah, a dentist, agreed that this was undoubtedly the height of civilization.
Then, with what almost appeared to be an angry look, he added: "But apologies don't fix the trains, now do they?"
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company