I've always wanted to take a taxi.
When I was a kid walking around New York City, those yellow cars were so fascinating and completely out of reach for me.
My parents didn't try to entertain it either. “Why take a taxi when there is a subway?” they say. It was unparalleled in terms of convenience, cost, and people-watching.
I grew up near the Jersey Shore, but both of my parents were from the city and lived downtown until my father “dragged” my mother south. Most of our family remained in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens and went there regularly. My aunt's house in Bensonhurst was my second home and the F train stop on Avenue P.
Even though she technically lived in Carbarbia, my mother remained the metro's biggest evangelist. Everyone knew to consult her about how to get around the city.
When I was in high school, two Japanese exchange students spent a year at my school, and my mother sought them out to football games so that their host families could take them around the city. They weren't, so neither were my parents. We boarded the F train from Avenue P and watched Hiro and Nami happily. They laughed as we rolled through Brooklyn and pulled into Rockefeller Center.
About 10 years ago, my mom moved back downtown and easily fell in love with transit. Since the basement has become dirty due to the coronavirus pandemic, she no longer cares about it as much.
But on Saturday, as she planned her route to the Port Authority, she shocked me. It was complicated, mostly on the ground, and I wasted so much time. Why didn't she take the nearest train? “Kirsten, that station is scary.”
This feisty, energetic woman who spent years doing free public relations work for the MTA across Jersey is avoiding the very thing that brought her back.
A few days later, MTA chief Jano Lieber made a disparaging remark that is still fresh in my mind. “Some of these high-profile cases, you know, have these horrific attacks getting into people's heads and making them feel like the whole system is unsafe.”
forgiveness?
Last year, there were 11 murders on subways, the most in the 21st century, according to the Manhattan Institute. By the grace of God, it wasn't 12 o'clock after an innocent man was shoved in front of a train by 23-year-old Kamel Hawkins on New Year's Eve.
The 11th incident was the horrific self-immolation of a woman by an illegal immigrant. Jamar Banks, who was involved in a double stabbing in Grand Central last month and has 54 arrests, stabbed two strap hangers with a knife last week. The list goes on.
Never mind how many random crimes go unreported by ordinary people who have simply come to accept and ignore such disorder.
Lieber's words were the equivalent of instructing a subway vagrant to “pee on your feet and then say it's raining.”
This feeling of instability is no illusion. I remember when a single “high-profile incident” brought New Yorkers, Paul, and government leaders together to prevent it from happening again. Don't ignore the countless times.
The subways were never perfect, but there was a common sense consensus that public safety took precedence over the comfort of those who broke the law. Crime was fought and laws were enforced.
Now, the trains and platforms are filthy, smelly and unsanitary, turning into massive slumber parties for the craziest people in our city. We have given it over to its worst elements.
I ride in my car every day because I have to, and while I walk the fine line between minding my own business and staying alert when a lunatic walks in, I drive with my head on a swivel. I'm riding on.
And it's even more infuriating to pay the price of dysfunction and watch people in scrubby work clothes every day clean the turnstiles as if they were trained in a vault by Bela Karolyi. That's true.
For many years, the subway has been clean, functioning, and safe. And we took it for granted. Now no one seems to know how to get back to the state we squandered.
Lieber and Kathy Hochul, on the other hand, are good at pushing congestion pricing while providing reduced fares to exploited New Yorkers (who must trust that the MTA will not mismanage these funds). I thought it was time.
In preparation, Hochul used subway cars for photo shoots to promote safety, but Lieber told us fear was on everyone's minds.
Maybe they should take a page out of former Mayor Ed Koch's book and ask, “How am I doing?”
Mr. Lieber, in his arrogance, he would not lower himself to ask, but I propose this anyway. You have lost people like me and my mother. New Yorkers who defended the subway saw it as an essential, and certainly an exciting part of the subway. urban experience.
Denying it won't fix the train. But listening to the people who love it will be a start.
