December 23, 2005
MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE, THE TRAINS ARE BACK:
Grudging Praise for an Absent System (JAMES BARRON, 12/23/05, NY Times)
For three days, New Yorkers could not watch the closing doors, could not try to make sense of garbled announcements, could not wonder why the express always pulls out just as the local pulls in.So the news that transit workers were going back to work left many New Yorkers thinking one of those only-in-New-York thoughts: a subway car is a beautiful thing. As they looked forward to swiping their MetroCards again and squeezing into sardine-tight seats in impossibly crowded cars, they voiced grudging affection for a subway system they wish they did not have to live with but cannot live without.
"We all whine in the subway," said Samuel Kroma, a messenger who lives in Jamaica, Queens, "but we all want it. There's no other means of transportation. This city wasn't planned for cars."
The species wasn't. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 23, 2005 12:00 AM
If the city hadn't butted in in the first place 70 years ago and forced the two private companies that ran the original subway system into bankruptcy and eventual municipal takeover, you'd potentially have the situation of competing lines with union contracts that ran out at different times, so that one subway system would still be running even if the other was out on strike (as was the case with the Port Authority's subway, which kept running between midtown and the WTC site during this week's strike, even if you had to travel via New Jersey to get from Point A to Point B). That's what the situation was when the unions were first formed, and their strikes were a major inconveinence, but not something that paralyzed the entire city.
Posted by: John at December 23, 2005 10:31 AMNo, but cars were planned for the species. Works great out here.
Posted by: jefferson park at December 23, 2005 1:02 PMOJ: why don't you move there?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 23, 2005 2:32 PMRobert:
We've got our own. You can hear the train roll along the Connecticut River from our house.
Posted by: oj at December 23, 2005 2:57 PMNice to hear some Democrats are facing reality, although forced to do so by the Union. Nice bit of irony too.
Posted by: Genecis at December 23, 2005 5:06 PM