On the tracks, nowhere fast
Aman said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.” The great journalist, novelist and poet Stephen Crane, a former New Yorker, published that in 1899. One hundred and nineteen years later, we could replace “universe” with “MTA.”
The F train is having an identity crisis, expected to last through early Monday morning and sure to repeat soon. I knew the F has been a mess in Manhattan, especially after hours — how New York is that? — so after a rare night out in the Village, I figured I’d get the R at Union Square and then transfer in Park Slope to get to my house in further-out Brooklyn.
There were no signs up outside the turnstiles, so I swiped in and walked down. There, a sign “explained”: F makes all Q express stops in both directions between Lexington/63 St and Canal St
F makes all D stops in both directions between Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr and Stillwell Av
I’m not sure if that’s a zen koan or a dadaist manifesto or a cry for help.
The sign was taped to a wall with four replied the universe, other service updates, some with partial line maps and some without.
From left to right: The N is the D on weekends for electrical improvements so take shuttle buses or the R — There’s no Brooklyn-bound Q at nights for station improvements so take the N and then get a Q at Dekalb Ave — The N is also the D on weeknights for electrical improvements and then there’s no R so take shuttle buses and/or D N trains — F trains stop here on weekends for signal improvements and are also Qs and Ds, depending on where you are — And, again, the N is the D on weekends. Got it? This is every lousy outfit in the world dumping paper that communicates almost nothing, while checking off some box that says “information has been communicated.”
After reading the signs a few times, I passed the time watching other people read and discuss them. French tourists breaking out in Bronx cheers and native New Yorkers staring intently and then blankly, some of them finally turning to leave and try some other route. My thoughts started to drift: If the F is running on the Q and D lines, what is it that makes it the F?
Would I still be me if I’d had different parents?
And, so long as I am still me, how am I going to get home?
On my long trip home, I asked the MTA some of those questions. While the universe at least bothered to tell the man about its indifference, @MTA offered only silence, as though the commuter tweeting on the train is the new tree falling in the woods.
@NYCTSubway, the sister Twitter feed for the trains, did reply during an earlier terrible commute, after I swiped into a station that had no trains stopping there and no sign before the turnstiles saying so and a lot of confused and unhappy people on the platform.
The @NYCTSubway Twitter feed told me I should always visit mta.info, which would have been cutting-edge stuff in the AOL era. There’s no universal overview there of the system — you know, a map of what’s actually happening at the time.
There is a service status chart, but it’s vague as can be. A trip planner that, for me at least, doesn’t show trips. And a mobile landing page has literally no useful information.
To be fair, the MTA has opened its data up to outside coders and app-makers so there are lots of apps and map sites where you can see how best to get from place A to place B.
But basic signage and communication remain hugely important for people who don’t use the internet or don’t always remember to check, or anyone whose phone runs out of charge.
The map is not the territory, of course, and the territory has plenty of bigger problems — ones that come with a $37 billion or so price tag to modernize the system over a decade that will be jam-packed with service delays to get new signals in place if that work actually gets funded and done, and even more breakdown delays if it doesn’t.
It’s hard to see the light at the end of the billion-dollar tunnels when the crew we’re entrusting with them can’t manage to write useful signs.