[Continued]

 

Now don’t think I’ve gone all soft on the DC Metro just because they have some interesting innovations. They’ve also got some ideas that, to me, have tanked.

What’s up with the female computer voice that announces, “Doors open. Step back. Allow customers to enter. Doors open. Step back …” It’s the same voice on every car. What happened to individuality? What happened to cultural diversity? What happened to conductors providing us with a verbal scenic tour of each stop or a barrage of gibberish from a PA system that just doesn’t function? I like my subway conductors to yell things like, “Get on the train or we will not be able to leave the station,” or, “If you do not let the doors close we have to put this train out of service. NOW LET THE DOORS CLOSE.”

I did hear the conductors on the DC Metro say some things but it’s unclear exactly what was said. It seems their conductor’s PA system, when it is used in place of the computer lady, is as bad as the NYC subways. It was all gibberish to me. That made me smile.

 

But the computer lady’s voice was clear, I’ll give you that. On one train it got caught in a loop and she kept repeating, “Doors open. Doors Open. Step back. Doors open,” even after the doors had already closed and we were pulling out of the station. Could that be dangerous?

Why did they have to put the subway so far underground? Is the swampy soil of DC so unstable? There are some long-assed escalator rides down to the subway platform that are required before the subway system can be accessed – and I mean long. It can add another five minutes to your travel time unless you walk down the left side – the passing lane on the escalator – or walk up it when you want to exit. My thighs were burning after one journey up and I had vertigo looking down.

There’s no paint on the walls, no tile, no nothing. Everything is gray cement and there is no artwork. Where are the white tiles or the mosaics shaped like a whale (82nd Street, Museum of Natural History) or a scene from the circus (34th Street Penn Station, 8th Avenue Line)? Where is the probably toxic, lead-based, distinctive red of the Lexington Avenue 54th Street stop? Where are the corroded pipes? The leaking water? The river of garbage running between the tracks? The DC Metro seemed, well … dare I say it … clean, and in a way, colorless and therefore characterless.

And the tunnels are huge and open and airy – so big they feel like a giant cave to me. They’re too big, is what they are. And it’s eternal twilight inside – indirect lighting everywhere. No glaring, bright-as-day NYC fluorescents, just soft dusk. The problem with that is I needed a flashlight if I wanted to read while I was traveling down the escalator or waiting on the platform. What are they trying to do, promote socialization and community?

There are round lights on the platform that blink before a train comes in. All the lights on your side blink. Perhaps this is to stop people from leaning over the track to look for an oncoming train. I didn’t see anyone do it so maybe it works. Or maybe we’re just crazy New Yorkers who need to live dangerously. I leaned over the track — I couldn’t help myself. And I prefer to feel the incoming wind that precedes a subway car wash over my face, as my signal that a train is on the way. There’s something comforting about that.

Did I mention they don’t have groin hitting, backside whacking, stainless steel, turnstiles? They have weird, thick cheese-wedge shaped, orange doors that recede into the ticket taking rectangular guard boxes that guide you out of the subway platform. Anyone could jump them or squeeze through them – though I didn’t try so I can’t talk from experience. And the odds of jumping over them, tripping and falling flat on your face seemed minimal. How do they expect to deter turnstile jumpers?

One thing that was very weird was I didn’t see any rats in the Metro. They had to be somewhere. I know DC has rats. Every city has them – especially a city built on a swamp. But where were they? Were we down to deep for them to survive? Where there rat traps and poisons that were so well hidden I couldn’t see them? Where were the signs to beware of rat poison? I missed their familiar, furry, faces – their twitching snouts that always seem to be laughing at me, saying, “Yup, I’m still here.”

Maybe we have something to learn from the DC folks. Maybe the New York City subway system needs to be redesigned with some of these modifications in mind. Maybe we need focus groups of straphangers to argue until dawn and come to a consensus on a modified system tailored just to meet our needs? Maybe we need Bloomberg to lend the city some of his money so that it wouldn’t cost us consumers a penny for a redesign plan? But then, if the subway had all of its problems solved and we had a friendly, safe, Disney-fied system in place, would it still be New York?

Well … can I at least get the X-shaped bars put up overhead between the car doors on the F line?