The other day I was waiting for the Brooklyn-bound Q train at Canal Street around 6pm. The platform was very busy and I was standing well down towards the front of the train.
As soon as the train pulled into the station and the doors opened people started pouring out. In my usual polite British way I stood well to the side to allow everyone to exit—I can’t stand it when people start pushing to get in while everyone is still trying to get out. As the last person exited the carriage and I moved forward to get onto the train the doors closed and the Q pulled out of the station. I looked down the platform and I was the only one who hadn’t got on the train—a victim of my own politeness.
A set of doors on the following Q train refused to close at Union Square, so the next train into Canal Street was empty and passed straight through. A journey that should have taken 20 minutes turned into about 45 minutes.
Ordinarily this kind of thing would infuriate me but since the NY Subway runs so well all I could think was “well, at least it doesn’t happen all the time”. In fact, I struggled to remember the last time the Subway had let me down and I really couldn’t remember when or how.
When I lived in London during the late 1990s I used to have to wait for two or three trains every morning before I could find one with enough room to squeeze on. Not to mention all the delays and closures due to maintenance or malfunctions. And the expense. And the fact that the damn thing stopped running around midnight.
I’m sure the Tube has improved a lot since then. At least, I hope it has. But the next time you get stuck on the Subway in New York try to remember the last time it let you down. And if you can’t remember, then what are you complaining for?
The trains here let me down quite regularly, at least 2 or 3 times a week. It’s usually a long delay or a train stopping and expelling all its passengers for no apparent reason. At least no reason they are willing to share.
I never lived in London, I came to New York after a year in Seoul. The trains ran like clockwork over there, the subway was immaculate and every station had a clean bathroom. With that as a point of reference I still find the NYC subway to be gross and unreliable.
Pavvers, and you half-ill and all, or getting into the arena of the ill or whatever it was. You should have been in there with your elbows like the best of ‘em. Although really I admire the politeness, of course.
Berlin public transport - is this now going to turn into a comparative platform? - is, it goes without saying, ludicrously efficient. Trams, trains, tubes and buses as regular as clockwork and not majorly expensive. (The locals think it is but it’s half the price of London Transport and twice as good.) The trains may not be as regular as in St. Petersburg or Moscow - a packed train every twelve seconds. Remember? Where were all those people the rest of the time? St. Petersburg streets were normally desrted but the metro was always jam-packed - and the platforms certainly aren’t as pretty but… mustn’t grumble.
Hope you’ll get to see it all for yourself come the summer.
PS. I love it when you tell a story. I want to sit cross-legged at your feet, agog, and then have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. More everyday stories please.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I think it depends on your level of expectation.
I thank my lucky stars every time I sit in an airy NY subway car—especially with air conditioning in the summer.
Every time I am in London I marvel at how squeaky clean it is. But I can’t get over the fact that it can cost me the equivalent of $8 for a return journey of just a few stops. And then there’s the endless delays/line closures. I wonder how much a monthly travel card is in London nowadays? It’s got to be a lot less than here.
I always found the St Petersburg and Moscow Metros glamorous, clean and punctual. But to enjoy them I’d have to live there.
Maybe it’s the whole package—the city + the subway—that I enjoy.
PS Dezik. A trip to Berlin is in the pipeline…
By the way, I thought it worth mentioning here that nothing…and I mean nothing…compares to the trauma of entering or exiting a bus in Russia during the winter. A person could be arrested in the UK or US for the amount of force necessary to do either of these things, especially in Novgorod circa 1995.
I can’t even remember the number of times I had to ride the bus an extra couple of miles in order to wait for enough room so that I could actually make it to the exit. I used to ride straight past our apartment block to the top of our avenue, wriggle and elbow my way to the doors and then exit on the second pass. Of course, it didn’t help that everyone was wrapped in half a dozen layers. Oh, and the windows were so frozen that you couldn’t see where you were until the doors opened. Happy days.
Well, after the London bombings last year the numbers on the tube seemed to drop. This is n’t to say that tube travel has become more comfortable though…
I must admit I’m not really a reliable source of information onthe tube as I’m always late for works so I never see the rush hour and I generally travel by bike. Ideal for London, not so good for New York perhaps.
Ever taken the G train, P.D.? It’s regularly a nightmare. It’s let me down more times than I can count.
Meredith, hardly ever I have to admit.
The last time I took the G was one month ago. I left a good amount of time (one hour) to get from Prospect Heights to Greenpoint because I knew how unreliable the G can be. I walked from Prospect Park to the nearest G stop in Fort Greene, the train arrived straight away and I was in Greenpoint in ten minutes. I had the same experience on the return journey. The whole journey probably took 30 mins each way.
However, I know the G is awful. And I know that my experience was lucky. Perhpas the G (the exception) proves the rule that the subway in NY is not that bad…
We had almost 27 ins of snow in Central Park in the past 36 hours. How many lines weren’t running this morning? In England all you need is a sharp frost and half the country comes to a standstill
I have been living in London for 6 years now and take the tube everyday.
Much as I wish my contribution were a positive one I have to confess that the tube has not improved in the slightest and is actually getting worse!
It is always too expensive, too hot, too cramped and stress levels run so high that people are regularly rude.
The disappointment on a seated travellers face when a pregnant woman gets on is all too common!
Today is a momentous day for me! I will be moving close enough to work to cycle…..next I’ll be complaining about the fumes on the road!
Hello Susan Williams! And what did you make of our dirty, smelly New York subway during your Christmas visit?
£94 for a zone 1-3 monthly Oystercard - I can use it on Tube, bus, train, DLR. The London Tube still suffers from incessant random closures, and from stopping running at about 12.30 at night.
Thanks Luke. That’s about what, $170? And you can’t travel outside zones 1-3.
Most of my London friends live in zone 4 so they must be paying something like 110 pounds.
A 30-day unlimited ride (no zones) MTA card for bus and subway is $76. And it runs all night, albeit interfrastically.
pdberger said: “I’m sure the Tube has improved a lot since then.”
I’d like to add to everyone else’s Tube comments, “Uhh… yeah… what they said….”
I think it’s sweet, though, that you maintain enough unsullied optimism of youth that you would so readily believe that in eight or nine short years, anything would have changed for the better.
You little “glass-half-fuller”, you….
~C~
I would give anything for people to even notice that I am pregnant and grumble, but at least give up their seat. My commute from Harlem to Park Slope takes me an hour every day - door to door, not too bad. But even after opening up my winter jacket to reveal my 5 month pregnant belly - I can’t get anyone to offer me a seat! They just ignore me. One time a woman pushed in front of me to get a seat, and even when I told her I was pregnant, she nor anyone sitting around offered me a seat on the subway.
Jenny, congratulations!
I have to say that for all of the Tube’s problems, chivalry and manners are not dead in the UK, despite Susan’s experiences.
I have NEVER known a less well-mannered place than the New York subway. It doesn’t matter how many bags a person is carrying, how old they are or what sex they are, no one will stand for them. I have been especially amazed by the number of young men who will gladly sit while young mums with kids stand.
I think my experiences in Russia made me even more aware of this. I was once scolded on a bus by a ticket collector because I had a ticket but my girlfriend did not and apparently I was “not cavalier” enough to buy her one. (Never mind the fact that she refused on principle since hardly anyone in those days, except stupid English people, bothered to buy bus tickets).
I wonder, could this lack of manners have anything to do with Americans’ lust for equality? I got into a bit of an argument about this not so long ago at a party because I admitted to standing up if I was on a crowded subway train and any woman, ever a relatively young one, got on. Apparently this was sexist.
Now, because I am so embarrassed to do the half-hearted-offer-of-seat-without-meaning-to-offend-or-be-sexist, I bury my head in a newspaper/magazine or just stand and let anyone take the empty seat so that I am not forced to feel guilty for sitting. I think it amuses my wife who has to coax me to sit down. But I really do feel my heart speed up as the carriage fills and I fear the entry of a woman of an indeterminate age who may look slightly tired…
Congats again, Jenny. PDB.
Hi Paul,
This is Ermiyas due remember me (Re:George Galloway).
Anyway having visted Paris in Novemeber 2005 and New York 2004 I’m glad London has one of the best tube system in terms of cleaness and customer service. And I agree that you do have to wait at least 2-3 tubes before boarding on the train. I travel towards Heathrow four days a week from Brixton, what I tend to do is leave at least 30 minutes before, I was supposed to commence my travel to my destination.
On the final note, you get those type of people quite a lot of time, you being nice wait for the passengers to come-out after waiting for five minute, some people just push in and try and get a seat before you. I get realy mad with those kind of people they have no consideration at all. But after a while you learn to adapt to those kind of people, I don’t think it’s right but that is life.
Cheers Ermiyas from Brixton/London
Ermiyas, Of course I remember you. It seems to me that the problem in London is simple and yet unsolvable. You need bigger trains and bigger platforms. but that requires bigger tunnels which I assume is prohibitively expensive if not physically impossible.
I found the New York subway slightly confusing. Fortunately my boyfriend knew from experience so I mainly followed him.
What I did notice however, was the lack of signage, and staff. In London the tube stations have excellent informations boards and announcements all the time.
We also have lots of staff at stations to help people.
Nevertheless, I fell in love with NYC and can’t wait to come back!
I agree with you London is an old city the infrastructures does not allow to re-build new tunnels easily, where us if you go to DC it is easy to build new tunnels and lines. On the other hand there is too much bureaucracy which consumes a lot of time and money, for example they are trying to extend the east London line to West Croydon (South London) and Wimbledon (South West London) that project initially started more than 6-8 years ago but they have not started building yet.
Ermiyas, NYC has been “planning” on building a subway line down the east side of Manhattan since 1920.
London tubes are cleaner, the stations are infinitely prettier, and it has the best and clearest map in the world of transit systems. The NY subway, on the other hand, is more reliable, the carriages are bigger and the air-conditioning in the summer is a sweet blesssing. As an ex-Hackney resident, living miles from a tube stop, I’d like to mention how excellent London buses are. They run all night, are pretty reliable (as reliable as NY subways) and will get you to within two streets of anywhere for one solitary pound (or has that gone up no?), and no quibbling over zones.
Erm, I am going to have to quibble, having lived in Hackney, Clapton and Surrey Quays. My bus journeys were always a nightmare. Not because of the buses but because of the traffic. I sometimes had to wait an hour for the 188 bus to even arive before my one hour journey to Russell Square. The same with the beloved No.38 from Lower Clapton. Although I have to admit the buses themselves were comfy and fun. I wonder whether congestion charging has improved the travel times…
Your story about being too polite and being left behind reminded me of when that happened to me in NYC as well, only I asked a Jewish woman how to get off a bus in NYC. She said, simply, “Just say, GEDDING GOFF, GEDDING GOFF.
Pavvers, you have clearly hit upon everyone’s favourite subject: public transport. On my last trip to the Kingdom, an age ago, I took a number of trains between London and West Sussex. It’s a journey I’ve done on a squillion occasions, and the trains used to be those ones with the clunking doors that you couldn’t open from the inside - I once had to rescue a gaggle of confused American ladies, slightly embarrassedly asking, “Um, how do we get out?” - and which, when you entered, instantly had you walking on people’s feet. But now the trains seem to run pretty much okayly and they are colourful, modern ones with a depressed immigrant wheeling a trolley up and down offering expensive wares. And the tube and buses and those trains of no name that jolt around London - what used to be called British Rail, or Network South East, or something; I can still get lost in their maps for… minutes - all seemed pretty good to me. The prices are, of course, ludicrous, but at least if the service is much better, you don’t mind quite as much coughing it up.
Hi With the new bendy buses added to London roads, it is now quicker to go around London especially at rush out time. And the congestion charge in my view has reduced the traffic a bit. But cost of public transports have gone up(Last year a single bus journey was£1 now you would have to pay£1.50 that is 50p added I think that is a bit crazy considering the poor are the one that need the public transports.
Every time they bring new idea they just execute it without consulting the genuine user.