IT’S N.Y.’S BIGGEST LIE & MTA PEDDLES IT DAILY
‘Traffic ahead’ stokes fury on stuck trains
SUBWAY RIDERS got stuck in a tunnel — and the MTA got caught in the biggest lie in the city.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority told hundreds of trapped riders there was “train traffic ahead” as they sweltered inside a stalled F train in the tunnel north of the Broadway-Lafayette St. station on Monday.
In fact, the F train’s problems were not due to train traffic, but rather to a more serious equipment malfunction that caused the southbound subway to lose power around 6:20 p.m.
Riders lost air conditioning and lights. The MTA lost credibility, passing off a rush-hour power failure as a small subterranean traffic jam, and once again peddling the lie it tells New Yorkers every day, throughout the day.
Transit workers have said they’re as starved for information as straphangers because Rail Control Center workers fail to let them know why they’re being held up.
“Most of the time, they don’t even tell us the true cause. They’ll relay that message to us, to tell the customers that there’s train traffic,” Richard Richards, who’s been a conductor and operator since joining the MTA 16 years ago, told the Daily News.
“It’s like we’re on a need-toknow basis,” Richards, 42, from Midwood, Brooklyn, added.
Crystal Young, chairwoman for conductors and tower crews at Transport Workers Union Local 100, said dead zones in the tunnels compound the difficulty in communicating with the rail center.
“You state it in the hopes they hear you,” she said.
Riders say they’re fed up with vague falsehoods and would rather face the cold, hard truth.
“Usually when you hear the train is in front of you, you think, ‘The train will move on and we will be on our way,’ ” Nicole Benoit-Roy, 48, said Tuesday at the Bedford-Nostrand Ave. G train. “But when it’s something else, you feel cheated. Why not tell the truth and be done with it?”
Christine Blasucci, who rides from the Bronx to Midtown, said she’s fed up with useless “train traffic ahead” announcements. She wants more facts from transit workers about the frequent delays.
“I think the MTA should get rid of it and think of other words to replace it with. People get very upset,” she told The News in a telephone interview. “I get upset, too, because that’s not right.”
Monday night’s steamed straphangers were left in the dark — literally and figuratively — about their plight during the evening rush hour.
“First, we were told it was train traffic ahead of us (we all know that lie all too well),” commuter Michael Sciaraffo wrote on Facebook. “As we waited with no further communication, people started getting very worried.”
Sciaraffo said it “felt like 120-degree heat.”
“Beads of sweat began rolling down people’s faces,” he wrote.
Riders were disrobing to deal with the heat, many shedding coats and some even shucking their pants, according to Sciaraffo’s account. Passengers were feeling faint, with some checking on elderly riders to see if they needed help.
A video of Monday’s beleaguered F train finally arriving at the station ricocheted around social media, showing the hands of desperate riders poking through a door as they tried pry it open. The train car’s windows were fogged with condensation.
The operator had told the rail center the cars were getting hot and riders were complaining. About 400 riders were stuck in the F’s virtual sauna.
The transit agency said it’s not glossing over the lie.
“Initial communication to customers by the train crew is under review,” MTA spokesman Stephen Morello said.
He said conductors are instructed to use precise descriptions and avoid the “train traffic ahead” announcement.
“We have been emphasizing this to crews,” Morello said. “We will continue to reemphasize it.”