Trains

I'm totally in love with the NYC subway. It was one of the first things that I enjoyed about NYC. Being able to just catch a train in your neighborhood and take it, with a few transfers, just about ANYWHERE in the city is so amazing to me. I've lived in other cities with public transportation - New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee. The pub trans systems in these cities vary in their quality and usage. Chicago's CTA has fantastic coverage of the city and on the grand scale of things, is pretty efficient and affordable. Detroit, the Motor City, has a joke of a system, as you could probably guess. The powers that be, when designing the city, decided encouraging people to take mass transit was encouraging them to reject the very industry that made the city what it was, so the only train in Detroit, the hysterically monikered "People Mover" (thepeoplemover.com) is like the train of the same name at Disney's Tomorrowland - it just takes you on a continuous loop and only tourists ride it. The Streetcar in NO was nice. I took it to work every day and it cost a buck. But there's only one line left, and it only goes up St. Charles and Carrollton and back. There's a bus named Desire now, no streetcar. I never took public trans in Milwaukee - I think it just has buses. Someone I worked with got mugged while waiting for a bus in a generally safe neighborhood about 2 weeks after I moved there, so I walked or drove everywhere for the 10 months I lived there.

I hate buses. I will do just about anything to avoid a bus ride. Not sure why. Probably due to the fact that I've had bad experiences on buses in every city I've lived, except for Milwaukee in which, as per above, I never rode. The fact that there isn't a subway under Central Park still steams me. I'd really rather walk through the park than take the Crosstown bus. HATE it! Ryan, my fiancé says it's irrational. It makes perfect sense to me. Why ride a bus when you can take THE TRAIN.

Since moving here, I've taken nearly every train line somewhere. Even the infamous G, which everyone in NY calls the Ghost train since you almost never see it. They sometimes stink, they're often crowded, on the older unautomated trains you can rarely ever understand the conductors' announcements or if you can they're at ear-splitting levels... The trains are delayed a lot, and sometimes, like the 7 train on the weekends until the middle of April, they don't run at all, forcing you onto (I shudder to think) a Shuttle bus. Some of the lines have cars that are so old, you feel like you just walked onto the set of 1979's "The Warriors" upon entering them. But I love them.

When I lived in Manhattan, I lived off of the 4/5/6 (Green) line. All the trains are new on the 4/5/6. The announcements and doors are operated automatically and they have digital read-outs that show you what the next stop will be and what the current time is. The computer voice that announces the stops is soothing and set to a comfortable volume level. The cars are, relatively speaking, clean. But for some reason, the cars are narrow. Very narrow. AND, the East Side of the city only has one train line, as opposed to the 3 on the West. Friday afternoon in a 6 train is like taking a joyride in a sardine can - smelly, wet and extremely crowded. But the 4/5/6 trains run pretty reliably and they aren't always packed...

Now I live off of the N/W (Yellow) line in Astoria, Queens. The first time I took this line, I got on the wrong train. I was trying to get to Flushing. I got some instructions on hopstop.com (a treasure for anyone living in DC, Chicago, NY, Boston, or SF using pub trans) which told me to take the R train to a dreaded bus. Hey, I was a newbie - now I know you take the N/W to the 7 to get to Flushing. Duh! But, I was ignorant. Really ignorant. I got on the N instead of the R and as soon as we cleared the East River, the train miraculously rose up, up, up right into the daylight. I'd taken the R to the Queens Target before, so I knew I wasn't supposed to be above ground. But what a sight - just like my hometown El train! Here I was on an elevated train, looking out on the sun-dappled graffiti filled urban landscape that is Long Island City.

The big joke was I was on my way to a work assignment as a cater waiter, and as always happened to me when they sent me to Queens, I got lost. Every trip to Queens for the first year I lived here involved me getting lost, calling Ryan and asking him to look up where I was on Google maps and asking him to help me get unlost. He was my ghetto GPS. I got to the job just a little late, after taking the train all the way to Astoria (my first unintentional visit to my current beloved nabe!), getting a kind bus driver to literally take his bus PAST the end of his line (the first good experience I ever had on a bus - although the engine on it died and he had to pull over and restart it about 4 times) to drop me off at the walking path at Flushing Bay on which I literally ran a mile to the jobsite. Anyhoo, I digress.

I've taken trains at all times of the day and night. I've gotten lost, missed my stop and wound up in the wrong Borough and had to go back, I've gotten shut out from stations by using my unlimited MetroCard at the same station twice in under 10 minutes (don't even get me started on that one)... I walked 7 miles round trip to work during the MTA strike of Christmas 2005 in the bitter cold. I've watched urine roll back and forth across the floor of a train. I had a rat stand right next to me on the 53rd Street station platform while waiting for the E train on Thanksgiving morning, like he was waiting for the train, too. I've been harrassed, panhandled, yelled at by crazy people, pushed, hit up to buy candy about a million times... I've waited an eternity for a train to come - like "I could've walked home in the same amount of time" long, and yet, I love the NYC subway. I wish it could take me everywhere. I could write a whole blog entry on the brand new N trains... Maybe I will!