Thursday, 1/28/10

W. 145th Street, 7:15 am. When I got to the station, the upstairs platform for the A & C was full of people...people lined up on the stairs to try to catch the first express that pulls in -- either the A upstairs or the D downstairs. There is the beep beep beep of a train coming but no announcement of which train...it's an uptown train on the other platform...we are all frozen in our places, straining to hear...a big loud announcement...warning us about security...no information about the trains that are arriving...we wait. a C train pulls in unannounced....then suddenly I see people rushing downstairs...it's a D...we all try to get there as quickly as possible....we get on and stand some seconds but within the minute we are leaving...on the express....by the time I get to W. 4th, where I need to change to the A or C to go downtown to BMCC, I am exhausted...the train is crowded and the lighting is poor and I stayed up late last night and had to get up early to get to school....ready to sleep rather than teach...but anyway...I try to go upstairs to the C/A platform quickly...just as I get to the top of the stairs the subway doors slam shut on the C...I have to wait another 5 minutes -- you'd think that in the middle of rush hour, there would be a more structured, organized approach to mass transportation...finally, there is an annoucement that an A is appraoching (this is downtown W. 4th...the Village...in my neighborhood, there are no announcements by the dispatchers...it's just a "let them eat cake" attitude...). I wait for the A, get on, the doors stay open, an E local arrives, opens its doors, makes an announcement, closes the doors and begins to move even before the express train's doors close...our doors close and we begin to move fast, overtaking the E in the tunnel along the way...but the lead is not great nor does it last for long...30 seconds after we pull into Canal Street, along comes the local....what is the notion of Express? Should an expres train have slightly different goals and function more efficiciently to try to bring the local trains up to the standards set by the express and not the other way around? Very frustrating...