For those of you bros who live in a “community” that values each other and delivers baked goods to the new neighbors, cherish it. The most shocking part about my move to New York City from Boston was not the big buildings or the stench of decaying cat carcasses on the streets, it was how little of a shit New Yorkers give about each other.
There are 8 million people here and I wouldn’t count on one to piss on you if you were on fire. It’s not because they’re all bad people, it’s because everyone’s subscribed to the Bystander Effect. Someone else will take care of it. Someone who isn’t in a rush to get to Soul Cycle. I’ve seen very few kind gestures in this city because it’s so much easier to concentrate on keeping your legs moving in this rat race. It’s a faceless city that allows you to be completely anonymous, so what’s the point of doing anything good if you can’t get credit for it or do it for Instagram?
A cynical assessment of a city I really like, I know, but I just got off the fucking subway and I’ve never seen a collective group of mostly educated people be so fucking thick-skulled and aloof when it comes to letting people on and off the subway. Everyone just congregates around the doors instead of moving to the center and refuses to step off the train for two seconds to let people off. It makes me want to punch a baby every morning.
Ok, I’m not sure why I wrote all that but I’m not deleting it now so DEAL WITH IT.
But, this phenomenon is affecting how millions of people get to work every day. New Yorkers are no strangers to hearing the phrase: “We’re experiencing train traffic ahead of us. We apologize for any inconvenience.” The MTA delays have gotten so problematic that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had to declare a state of emergency for the subway in June after passengers on the F train were stuck underground for over an hour with no light or AC.
In an effort to iron out the “dwell time,” the MTA is planning to throw $20 million to implement a “six-point plan,” despite being $36 billion in debt. The plan will include 640 new open-ended subway cars with slightly wider doors that the MTA estimates could reduce dwell time at each station by 32 percent, Gothamist reports.
The MTA also plans to purchase directional floor mats to “encourage customers to move into the train and away from the doors in order to improve dwell times at stations.” Pretty pathetic that “the world’s city” has to resort to fucking floor maps to remind people how to move their asses in the 100-year-old subway cars. The mats are currently in only two C trains, so the rest of you assholes are free to block the doors while reading your Kindles.
[h/t Gothamist]