There’s No Such Thing as a Free Ride

The MTA has a new “Trip Planner” feature on its website. A handy little tool, it helps you find the best route between any two points in NYC, and how long your trip should take. Recently, while trying it out, I discovered that the MTA actually has a schedule! What for? I mean, why would you go through all the trouble to create an elaborate timetable for every bus and train line in the city when you know fully well you won’t follow it? At least one out of every five trips involves some kind of major delay or disruption. I am not making this up. This is a known scientific fact.

Take last Friday, for instance. A midday jaunt between Grand Central Terminal and Bay Ridge that normally clocks at around 45 minutes turned into a three hour, two-fare odyssey—with bonus 32-block hike included. After finally giving up on my last inexplicably-missing-train, I started my walk down Third Avenue four minutes ahead of the next scheduled bus. A long time later, I arrived at my stop, thirty-two blocks and nine minutes after my theoretical bus would’ve passed. Did anybody see a bus go by? Exactly. Me neither.

Situations such as this are considered business-as-usual by the MTA, so much so that, out of all train and bus lines involved in my ordeal, the “Service Advisories” page on the MTA website only mentioned a problem with one. The people of this city are routinely the target of this kind of treatment, and are held hostage by the MTA on a daily basis.

Now, in a civilized country this kind of service would probably be enough to start mass riots, torching of buses and trains and public hanging of all responsible. However, in the great city of New York, half the population actually thinks that MTA service is reasonable to good, according to a recent survey. Can you say baa, anyone? Who are these people? Stay-at-home moms? The homeless? MTA personnel?

Actually, New Yorkers go about our business the best way we can: traveling at the speed-of-inefficiency, shepherded by overpaid employees who just don’t care if we get home or not—especially when it’s the holidays and they want yet another raise or else. However, the patience of the meek people of this great city has a limit, and one day…

I think the MTA needs to kick off a new public relations campaign. I have a couple of suggestions. In keeping up with their tradition of humorous, uninspiring posters, they should hang signs like “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” at every station entrance, every bus stop. “We should be moving. Shortly?” or “Don’t try anything funny and no one gets hurt”, inside every car. At least we’d know what to expect for our two-and-a-quarter good old American dollars.