InsideTransit

My favorite place in the world is Grand Central Terminal. It’s my favorite place for so many reasons – watching the people go to work, leave work to head home to their families, the smell of the trains, the shops, the great black and white cookies at Zaros, the transit museum shop and being able to watch the place go from such a pile of crap to one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture out there.

With the hurricane named Irene heading into NYC, there has been a suspension of all rail and subway service so GCT is empty. The MTA took some photos and below is one of them. Just amazing to see the place empty – just think of what it would normally be like on a Saturday afternoon.

Here’s something I never thought I would see in my lifetime – a complete shutdown of the NYC MTA bus and subway system. This is due to approaching Hurricane Irene. MTA’s Aaron Donovan notes that the system will resume, “when conditions make it possible”.

This suspension includes ALL subway lines (both the letters and numbers) and ALL buses in every borough. Also included are the commuter rail lines – Metro North and Long Island Rail Road.

For historical purposes, below is a screenshot of the current MTA.info website showing all subway and bus routes are currently suspended.

If you are a NYC resident, make sure to check mta.info for the latest transit information. I suggest not heading to a subway station or bus stop without verifying that the system is up and running.

Last night, U.S. President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden was dead. From the reports I saw on CNN, people took to the streets all across the country singing the songs of this country including the national anthem.

Here’s how a packed NYC subway car full of people reacted to the news of Bin Laden’s death. From the narration at the end of the video, it appears that not only are locals on the train but also people from Poland and Denmark.

When I watched the video below for the first time yesterday, I got chills. It’s one of the most awesome transit videos I have ever seen. The person who shot the video put together a bunch of clips from the various Times Square subway stations. The video is from 1986! It is absolutely amazing to see how far the NYC MTA subway system has come in the last 25 years. In 1986 there was no air conditioning on most of the trains and the cars were full of vandalism in the form of graffiti. Some of my favorite types of NYC subway trains are included in this video in an almost new state! You can also see what it was like to use tokens — way before the Metrocard made its first appearance.

I know it’s cheesy but where are all of those people in the video today? What have they been doing since 1986? The man in the white shirt carrying a couple of suitcases? What about the man in the tie carrying the briefcase? The woman in the white sport coat leaning against a pole carrying her pocketbook?

So take 10 minutes and watch this video and see what it was like to ride the subway in the mid-80s!
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Ok, here’s one you don’t see everyday…two women get into a fight on a subway train in NYC over, “eating etiquette”. The NY Daily News breaks down what you can see in the video below:

“The video clip begins with a woman chowing down on spaghetti while trading barbs with another woman sitting across from her on a subway car. The feud escalates a few minutes in when the middle-aged passenger asks the woman, “What kind of animals eat on the train?” The diner responds, “What kind of fat —- looks like you?”

After the two women battle it out for a few seconds, other passengers get in the middle including a man who apparently got scratched by a piece of al-dente pasta.

I don’t think you are allowed to eat on the subway although everyone does it. My only real question here is, “did the woman who was eating the pasta properly discard of the food carton and utensils?”
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Ya’all need to check this out – seriously it’s the coolest thing related to the NYC subway map I’ve seen in a long time. Check out the full project page to learn more.

I don’t even want to describe this thing because it’s something you need to see. Here’s the overview from the developer, “At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.”

The application uses public data from the MTA using their API connection.

You can watch the real-time sounds here and you can see a fast-forward demo below.

If you watch this video, you will probably never sleep on a train ever again (I am not kidding). In the video below, a NYC subway train is traveling from station to station.  It’s interesting to me because I saw a lot more rats in the last year or so in the NYC subway than I have in the previous 10 years. So much of the rat issue is because subway riders just don’t care – they throw crap and food everywhere. Yet in all my decades in NYC, I never saw a rat inside a subway car.

This video, shot on the #4 train, shows a big rat running up and down the subway car. A man is sleeping at the far end of the train. At the end of the video, the rat jumps right up (!) on to the sleeping man. The man pushes the rat off him and the rat races again to the other side of the train.

Another new year, another No Pants Subway Ride coming to NYC! We wrote about the No Pants Subway Ride last year and this year looks like it will be an even bigger event. You can find all of the details for this year’s No Pants here. This year, the event will take place globally on January 9, 2011 and groups will start from locations in each of the five boroughs and converge on Union Square. RSVP to the event on Facebook – so far nearly 6,000 people have registered.

If you aren’t in NYC, check out all of the cities that will be participating around the world. U.S. cities include: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, El Paso, San Diego, San Francisco and a dozen more. International cities include: Zurich, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, London, Barcelona, Amsterdam and several others.

The rules include, “As soon as the doors shut at the stop before yours, stand up and take your pants off and put them in your backpack. If you’d like to use a briefcase, purse, grocery bag, or whatever instead of a backpack that’s fine too. If anyone asks you why you’ve removed your pants, tell them that they were “getting uncomfortable” (or something along those lines.) Exit the train at your assigned stop and stand on the platform, pantless. You will wait on the platform for the next train to arrive. Stay in the exact same place on the platform so you enter the next train in the same car as you exited the last train.”

The requirements for participation are:

1) Willing to take pants off on subway
2) Able to keep a straight face about it

Here’s a video from last year’s No Pants Subway Ride:
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Last weekend the blizzard of 2010 rolled into NYC. It was so bad that snowmen were driving buses! But did you ever wonder what happens when a brand new train runs outside over snow covered tracks? The video below comes from Sheepshead Bites, a blog from the southern section of Brooklyn. The video shows a train running on tracks in the Brighton line (either the B or Q train). As you can see, the train sure does put on some electrical display! Later in the day service was suspended on the line for electrical issues.
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This week brings new fare increases to the NYC subway and bus system. The base fare didn’t increase but riders will receive a smaller bonus and the price for monthly unlimited cards have increased. As a person who used to live in a two-fare zone, these increases don’t seem that high.

In any case, the NMA animation group out of Taiwan put together a video for their audience which apparently shows you what it is like to ride the NYC subway. My friend Mark would probably say this is accurate. The video explains that the entire system is in a state of disrepair, train operators drink (and carry stylish shopping bags) and sleep on the job, there are lots of perverts and sociopaths riding the subways and medieval battles break out daily. They also used a W train in the video which no longer operates.

Warning: This video could be considered NSFW.
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