Transportation

As Ozan Akipek leaves his apartment, he must twist and turn around construction just to reach his street corner. “It’s annoying, my neighborhood is covered by fencing and machines” states Mr. Akipek. “The construction is right outside my door, and I walk by rats night after night.”

Mr. Akipek lives in the Upper East Side, on Second Avenue. The recent Second Avenue subway construction has created a maze for him to exit his building.

One will notice that as they walk through Second Avenue, there is no straight path from point A to point B. They must surpass a tangle of scaffolding, fences, and other obstacles to get where they want to be. Some people also have to dodge rats along the way, because construction has led to a decrease in trash pickup, making room for vermin to invade the streets.

Pedestrians are not the only agitated residents. “Biking down Second Avenue is so scary” says local bike rider Samuel Leff. “You have cars right next to you on one side, and concrete on the other”. The areas on Second Avenue that have construction have no bike lanes, so cyclists are mixed into traffic. This dangerous scenario can cause a small fall from a bike into tragedy.

Upper East Siders may not have to deal with the construction much longer, but empty promises have many New Yorkers questioning the most recent deadline of 2016. The MTA is scheduled to open the stations December 30th, 2016, a whopping 87 years after the subway line was originally proposed. The project stopped and started repeatedly for decades until it is now further than it has ever been, but the initial completion date was 2014.

Daily riders of the Lexington Avenue line like Margaret Rodriguez are looking forward to the Second Avenue line, “I can’t wait… the [six] train is always super crowded going to and from work,” she says. In fact, the six train is part of the most crowded subway line in the nation. Upper East Siders have to decide between crowded trains or what seems like never ending construction on the street, but an end may be in sight.

The New York Post revealed workers have excavated about 65 percent of the site, and the 96th street station has finished its main site contract work.

For now, the Second Avenue line continues to be built, and it looks plausible that the 2016 deadline will be completed.

Most New Yorkers would probably agree that if there was a cleaner alternative to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) train system, they’d take it in a heartbeat. Anyone who has taken public transportation in New York have had the experience of riding in a filthy train. Unfortunately, this occurrence is a much greater issue than we thought. And it brings up an important question: Should riders have to pay what they do to ride in unsanitary conditions?

There have been numerous reports of cleanliness decreasing among train lines. According to the Straphangers Campaign’s surveys, 42 percent of trains checked in 2013 were clean, which is a ten percent decrease from the 2011 survey. The worst of the lines was the D train, where a mere 17 percent of people considered it clean.

The MTA and the Straphangers Campaign both claimed that this was a result of fewer cleaning workers because of budget constraints. In addition to fewer cleaners, Straphangers Campaign’s field organizer Jason Chin-Fatt believes that lack of cleanliness is due to increased ridership. When approached by Metro News he said, “When ridership goes up, there’s more opportunities for people to spill coffee and food.”

The D train isn’t the worst of it. The C train wins the award for worst overall service. It was ranked last in the 15th annual State of the Subways Report Card. It doesn’t stop there. According to the Wall Street Journal, the C train “has finished dead last in the ranking six times since the rankings were first issued, the most of any line in the subway system.” Riders agree as well. “I live closer to the C but I take the Q. It’s faster and less crowded, and it comes more often,” said Roy Gabay, 48 years old, of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, who was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The C train service is so terrible that Straphangers Campaign ranked the value of a C-train ride at 85 cents, which is much lower than the $2.50 base fare set by the MTA.

The London Underground is one of the oldest subways in the world, yet it’s regarded as one of the best metro systems to date. Opened in 1863, the London Underground, (also known as “The Tube”) has air-conditioned cars and is fairly cheap in the expensive country. It also has an 83% approval rating by the Straphangers Campaign compared to the New York Subway, which has a 75% approval rating. If London can keep a great metro system for over a century, why can’t the MTA?

The City Council pitched a proposal to fix our stinky subway problems back in 2012. “Let me make a suggestion to the MTA: We grade the restaurants, right? A, B, C. So we should grade all the stations in the MTA system,” said Councilman Peter Koo at a budget hearing.

As it turns out, the MTA does grade the stations on cleanliness, but does not share this information to the public. However, they have stated on their website that they plan on improving cleaning in several stations. According to the 2014-2017 MTA Financial Plan, it lists “Additional improved station cleaning at 10 heavily used stations/complexes in each borough” as one of their service quality improvements. Although its only 50 out of the 468 stations the MTA has in total, it’s a good place to start.

Transportation

Second Avenue Subway Pesters Nearby Residents

The C Doesn’t Stand for Clean