New York – This is one contest no New York City subway rider wants to win.
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An advocacy group for city commuters on Tuesday awarded its first “Worst Commute of the Week” award to a librarian from the borough of Queens for her story of an agonizing two-hour wait in a tunnel one stop from her home after skipping a restroom visit before leaving work.
The Riders Alliance awards are aimed at shaming New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state’s Legislature into enacting a long-term plan to fund and fix the city’s declining subway system.
The inaugural winner, City University librarian Jennifer Tang, recounted being trapped underground on a train when the last five minutes of her ride home from Manhattan to the Forest Hills neighborhood in the borough of Queens on Jan. 20 deteriorated into two hours.
“I hadn’t used the bathroom, figuring I only had a 30-minute commute from Manhattan to Queens,” Tang, 49, said in an interview. Then the train stopped and an announcement warned of signal problems.
“Five minutes became 10 minutes, became 20 minutes, became one hour, became one hour and 50 minutes,” said Tang, who was in pain and urgently hoping the subway would quickly reach her destination. “Now, before boarding the subway, even if it’s for one stop, I use the bathroom.”
The Riders Alliance invited commuters to share their stories using the hashtag #WorstCommute. Winners of the contest receive a chocolate replica of the MetroCard, which the subway system’s roughly 6 million daily riders swipe to enter stations.
Cuomo, who controls the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the public agency that runs the subways, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Overall subway on-time performance has plummeted to 65 percent – a drop of 15 percentage points over the past several years and the worst of any major transit system in the world, the Riders Alliance said.
Train delays more than tripled from 2012 to 2017 and subway speeds are now slower than they were in 1950, it said.
Tang said Jan. 20 incident stands out as a personal worst in a lifetime of subway riding: “Even in the ’70s when I almost got mugged on the subway, I never had such as horrible experience on the train.”
Get rid of every big shot of the transit authority They don’t ride in a subway car ever. We desperately need to have an elevated system on every avenue in manhattan as there was in the 1920s The auto industry killed it to sell more cars.
Sadly, Ms Tang’s commute sounds like an everyday occurrence for some. I could write a book of experiences like that, probably while waiting on the train on a usual ‘delay’, (which is actually just a normal trip now).
I rode the horrible NYC subways from 1955-1972, when I finally moved far from NYC. I haven’t used the subways, since 1999, when I visited Brooklyn. I survived the 12 day subway strike of 1966, during a very cold winter. One time I boarded an older train with straw seats, where the seats were facing the same direction, as the path of travel. After I sent down, I felt something squishy on the floor, on my shoe. It appeared that some lowlife had used that area, for his personal toilet! Another time, I was accosted while leaving the Brighton Line at Ave. H, by some young hoodlum, who thought that he had an easy target. Fortunately, my Uncle was with me, and he punched that guy. The cops were called, and that hoodlum tried to state that we started the fight, and that he was accosted. Anyway, the cop stated, “get back on the train” to that freak. The miscreant tried to state that a relative of his, was a big shot on the NYC police force. However, the cop stated “What does that make you, punk”. Also, my brother told me that he once saw a motorman drinking alcohol, while in his cab, while the train was moving. I still have some very unpleasant memories of the subways, after decades.