Subway Cars Go Into The Deep

If you've ever wondered where old subway cars go when they have served their time, the answer is probably not what you'd expect. They don't end up in junkyards or parked in old railsheds. Instead, they serve a deeper (ha) purpose, sunk to the bottom of the ocean to form artificial reefs.

Via the STUDIO 360 Twitter feed, I found these stunning images of subway cars on the way to their final destination. This series of pics, some surreal and some surprisingly beautiful, were taken by NYC photographer Stephen Mallon. The MTA has been dropping subway cars into the deep all up and down the Atlantic Coast for the last ten years to create the artificial habitats for marine wildlife. Certainly a much more productive reuse than the scrap heap.

Celebrities Ride The Subway Too

Whenever I think I see a famous person on the subway, my next thought is  that it can't be them because if you're famous why would you want to take the subway. I mean, that's what limos are for, right? However, apparently there are a decent number of celebrities who ride the rails here in ol' New York.  

Paper Magazine, which always has fun online features, has a photographic survey of 15 celebrity subway riders.  Some are truly regulars, like Mayor Bloomberg who is known to take the 6 every day from his manse on the UES to his office down at City Hall. Others, well, are a bit of a surprise....like Keanu Reeves! There's also a shot of Anderson Cooper taking the C to W. 4th (I'm assuming this because he lives in my neighborhood). 

So from here on out, I will not discount my celebrity sightings on the MTA. In fact next time, I might even have to take a photo.   

MTA Blows Up 72nd St, Halts Construction On 2nd Ave Subway

Something went spectacularly wrong during construction on the Second Avenue subway station at 72nd street earlier this week. What was supposed to be a controlled explosion for the escalator wells got wildly out of control and blew rocks and dirt more than 80 feet into the air, breaking windows and making pedestrians scatter. Miraculoulsly no one above or below ground was hurt.

The photo of the explosion above was captured by a tourist, John Wilson, who was told by an MTA employee to get his camera ready as they stopped pedestrians and cleared 72nd street for the blast--standard practice for the project. What wasn't standard was what happened next. Yesterday, the MTA said construction on the project has been temporarily halted until they can figure out what went wrong. Of course, the usual statement was released saying that it was not an act of "terrorism"....just another mishap on the long delayed and trouble Second Avenue subway.

NYC's Coolest Old Subway Map Is 40 Years Old

It was 40 years ago this week that the MTA made what was considered a colossal blunder; it introduced a mod-looking map of the world famous subway system by Italian designer Massimo Vignelli. The map was ultra modern and presented the subway in a grid of orderly and colorful lines that went at right and 45 degree angles. Unfortunately, it was so disconnected from the grid of the city that some stations were out of place and Central Park was represented as a squat, gray square. After a public uproar, the map was replaced in 1979 with the the version that's in use today.

The NY Times has an interesting story-behind-the-story tale of the map that went wrong. One interesting fact is that the map was supposed to be used with a series of other maps in stations that would have been more geographical in connecting to actual streets and tourist spots. Also, the MTA was so enthralled by Vignelli that they did absolutely zero testing of the radically new map before introducing it to a very cranky public. 

Oddly, a new version of the map has had a resurgence, designed by Vignelli himself. As I wrote here, The WEEKENDER started appearing on the MTA's website last year to show weekend changes to lines. It's become so popular that now it's available at all times to show service changes and disruptions, of which there are more than a few.  Glad to see the map is back and Vignelli's reputation somewhat restored too.

Kodak's Colorama Gets An Art Exhibit In Grand Central

The Colorama was a massive advertisement for Kodak prominently placed on the eastern wall of Grand Central Station's cavernous main room from 1950 to 1990.  It displayed an ginormous transparency of a Kodak image in which someone was using an instamatic camera or Super8 movie camera to record the scene.  As I've written here before, George Eastman didn't invent photography but he invented the idea that people should take pictures of each other as mementos of a occassion or trip. And the Colorama was the ultimate purveyor of the Kodak message, seen by thousands of commuters every day for 40 years.

There is currently an exhibit in Grand Central of the original photos that were displyed in the Colorama.   The pictures, 36 of them hung as prints in the MTA store/museum at Grand Central, are quintissential Americana scenes of familys and iconic American landscapes like the Grand Tetons, an endless wheat field in the plains, or a California beach.

It's a great sample and the only disappointing thing is that the exhibit centers just on photos from the 1960s. I would have loved to have seen how these photos and their depictions of the American family evolved over the decades.  You can see some of that as womean go from more traiditional family roles (a mother in a dress playing with a daughter playing with dolls, 1962) to small hints of women's lib (a women in capri pants biking atop a mountain in the Pacific Northwest, 1967). The photos will be up until November of this year.

Some Cool New Public Art For New Bleecker St Station

Recently, the MTA unofficially unveiled a new work of public art at the Bleecker Street station.  They took down the construction boards blocking the view of the new 6/BDF train transfer, which will eventually allow passengers to transfer to the uptown side of the 6.

The art on display is by an artist I know from my NYU days, Leo Villareal. He has created a honeycomb-like pattern of colorful flourescent tubes that shift and change color constantly.  It's really cool and watching the colors change is almost hypnotizing. Leo has specialized in computerized LED style displays, large and small.  This one is called "Hive" and it's a beautiful addition to the newly renovated station.

Two New Bleecker Street Subway Entrances Open

In NYC, where improvements to the city's 100 year old-plus subway move at a snails pace, there was some exciting news this week when two new entrances to the Bleecker Street subway station on the 6 line opened. This station is one of the oldest in the system and part of the original IRT trunk line that ran from City Hall up to Washington Heights and opened to the public back in 1904.

For the last three years, construction has been underway to shift the Bleecker Street platform 200 feet to the south to accomodate a new transfer point to the BDFM trains that run just beneath the old IRT line. The actual transfer, with shiny new escalators and elevators and some cool public art by an artist friend of mine, will open in June but this week the new entrances opened from the the street.  There is one right on Houston and, even though it's brand new, it's the style of the older entrances. The other one is a semi-odd spot, just off Houston and actually on Mulberry, hidden behind a Bank of America branch and under an advertising sign. This entrance has actually been there for years but was only for use by MTA employees to get into the tunnel.  Now its a fully tricked out double-wide entrance to a heavily trafficked station long in need of additional access points.

Anyway, it's not every day that a new subway entrance opens...especially in my neighborhood. So it's something to be excited about....at least for a transit geek like myself!

Beach 105th Street Is The Loneliest Station In New York City

The MTA released a ton of data this week about ridership figures for 2011. Basically, ridership across the system is up, recording nearly 1.6 billion passengers last year. It's the largest number to travel the system since 1950.

The figures have been parsed and examined over at the transit blog Second Avenue Sagas. However, there was one particular statistic that SAS pointed out that I found interesting.  Times Square, with nearly 190,000 riders a day, is not surprisingly the busiest station in the city. But the quietest station is Beach 105th Street, way out in the Rockaways, with an average of just 255 passengers a day. That is an incredible disparity.  The reason is that Beach 105 is served by the S shuttle line, which only runs to Broad Channel and back with an additional 10 express A trains for commuters.  Also, there is not much immediately around Beach 105th Street...just a Key Foods and some industrial sites.  I actually have been there, shooting a student film back in the 90's and I can say that part of the reason we were out there is that there were absolutely no people...especially in the middle of February. Brrrr.

I decided to look up the history of the lonley little station and, surprisingly, it is older than the actual NYC subway system. The original station opened in 1880, was called Seaside, and served as a stop on the Long Island Railroad.  After the station burned down four times (something that apparently happened a lot out in the windy Rockaways), it was finally replaced with a concrete viaduct that remains today. The MTA took over Beach 105th Street in 1956 and incorporated the line into its subway system.

The Sights And Sounds Of The NYC Subway

I found this cool little video over on my favorite subway blog, Second Avenue Sagas.  It's done by a freelance video editor based in Washington, Tim Sessler. It's a cool look at the sights and sounds unique to the subway system here in New York.  In DC, of course, things are much quieter in the sleek, soundproofed and sterile caverns of the Metro....which could explain this filmmaker's fascination with the MTA.  Enjoy!
   

MTA Closes A Subway Line For FastTrack

This week began an unusual MTA experiment as service was shutdown on the 4 and 6 trains from 10pm to 5am between Grand Central Station and Atlantic Avenue.  It's part of an extraordinary new approach to line maintenance that is being tested called FastTrack.  Usually, this sort of work would be spread out over a month or longer as track workers dodged regular trains and passengers suffered slow overnight service.  Now they are hoping for quicker more efficient repairs in a much shorter amount of time by shutting down an entire section of a line.

Tonight is the last night of this first FastTrack experiment and the reviews from the MTA have been positive.  The amount of work accomplished in those four nights by more than 700 workers has been staggering.  However, straphangers were not happy about having to take 3 trains instead of 1, as reported on CBS-2. Still it seems this sort of repair makes so much more sense in saving time and money while completing the necessary repairs on what is usually a 24/7 system.

What's In A Subway Sign? A New Font

In a break from their 45-year old master plan, the New York City subway system has introduced a new font to their signage.  At stations in and around the World Trade Center site, they have used Gotham instead of Helevetica to direct passengers to the entrance of the 9/11 Memorial.  The reason is that Gotham is the font of the memorial's trademarked design.

It is rather surprising change given how Helvetica has become a trademark of the system itself.  But the TIMES City Blog reports the MTA says this is actually just a temporary move.  The signs to the memorial are there because it currently has one controlled entrance (due to continuing construction at the site) and this is to guide thousands of visitors to that area in a clear, visually arresting way.

Everybody's Working For The Weekender

After years of complaints for the MTA to do something to help people understand the myriad of services changes and disruptions on an average weekend, they finally took some real action. Last week, the MTA reveal a new interactive weekend-only subway map called The Weekender, which takes over the home page of their website now Fri-Sun.

What is really cool is that they've utilized an updated version of the beautiful but damned Vignelli artsy map from the 1970s.  The map, which is similar to the ones in major cities like Boston, Washington and London, takes the disorder of the mammoth system and arranges it in sleek Modernist lines.  The problem was the lines don't really relate to the city's grid and, in the original, some stations were not located in the right spot geographically.  But with the interactive map, the mod map is used to show how the system is altered in a relativity clear manner, by blanking out stations not in service and "greying" out lines not operating.

It's a vast improvement over the previous alternative, which was trying to read the notices posted in the subway which were hard to decipher, especially at a glance.  Now if only they could limit the weekend work.  Unfortunately that's never gonna happen....the blessing and curse of a 24/7 system.

Ghost Town NYC: Hurricane Irene In Pictures

So it was a quiet weekend here in New York.  I mean that quite literally.  The city was deserted from Friday evening through Monday morning due to the concern about Hurricane Irene and the first-ever voluntary shutdown of the NYC subway.  In the end, the hurricane was a bit of a wash (pun intended) but it was fascinating to be in Manhattan minus all the people.  It was a post-apocalyptic weekend, minus the apocalypse thank god!

The picture above is Seventh Avenue, taken from the heart of Greenwich Village and looking uptown.  Amazing.  Not a car or pedestrian in sight.  Below are some more pics; the intersection of 6th avenue and houston, the IFC movie theatre (which closed for the weekend), and a couple of creative tape designs in Village storefronts.  It's like life in a ghost town; all we need are some tumbleweeds rolling down the streets.

This is eerie--6th ave and Houston, a major downtown intersection

No movies at the IFC Center in the Village

Rizza Hair Salon--artsy!

The Jonathan Adler store--patterned tape, of course

Swingin' Second Avenue Subway Workers

Ben over at Second Avenue Sagas posted this video of an MTA crooning during the lunch hour.  In neighborhoods on the UES where the noise, dirt and general nuisance of subway construction have been driving residents nutty, this guy intends to have his music calm the savage upper east-sider.  It just may be working....

A Trip Into The Tunnel For The 2nd Ave Subway

Benjamim Kabak over at Second Avenue Sagas got a special tour yesterday of the launch box and tunnels for the Second Avenue Subway. He has a great series of photos up on his site showing the deep cavern, nearly 60 feet under the avenue, as well as a peek inside the tunnel (seen above).

The west tunnel is now complete from 96th to 65th street and they just started boring the east tunnel.  Service on the line is still about 5 years away but this is a cool look at things to come.  Yes, Virginia, there will be a Second Avenue subway....here's the tunnel to prove it.

Nostalgia Rides The Rails For Christmas

The MTA is running some vintage trains for the holidays on special excursions.  Unlike previous rides where the special trains ran once for a extra fare of $20, this year you can ride one of the old R1/9 cars for the price of a regular fare swipe.

The trains will be running on the 6th Avenue line on Sundays from 10AM-4PM.   Also the MTA is even putting some vintage buses into service as well.  You can catch one on 34th Street in Manhatan and other lines throughout the city.  For details on these trips to the past, you can check the MTA website for lines and depature times.

Tracking Progress On The Second Avenue Subway

I was on the Upper East Side last week for a film shoot and got to see first hand all the construction happening on Second Ave for the new "T" line.  Its been in the news lately as merchants and residents have been complaining loudly about the noise and mess of construction and how it's been bad for business.  This weekend the MTA responded with an comprehensive new plan to address these concerns.  Over at the Launch Box blog, there is a summary of what's going on along with pictures of all the mess on the street.

Also on that blog, they've put together a great Google Map where you can follow the progress of the boring machine. The map also has pictures of the new station locations and some of the major construction sites, like the launch box itself where the tunnel boring machine took off from earlier this year. Currently, it's chewing its way through granite about 100 feet below 79th Street.  It has about 15 blocks to go before it will turn around and start boring it's way back up Second Ave next year.

A Fare Hike And A Metrocard Calculator

The MTA voted to hike fares on the subway and LIRR for the third time in 3 years.  Ouch.  The main pain will be felt by those with the monthly Metrocards which will jump 17% to 104 clams for an unlimited ride on trains and buses.  That card used to seem like a bargain.  The base fare will rise to $2.50 for single rides but multiple rides bought with a Metrocard will still have a volume discount.

In other fare news, a friend has pointed me in the direction of a useful little website which helps you figure out how to get full use of the money you put on your Metrocard. Figuring out those volume discounts can be a little complicated but this site makes it easy/breezy.  Worth checking out if you get annoyed, as I do, when you are left with random amounts on your card like 65 cents.

Only sixty years ago, 65 cents would have been worth 13 rides on the subway....now's it's less than a third of one.  

MTA's Gap Rap

If you ride the LIRR, you may have noticed the profusion of signs in recent years to "Watch The Gap".  Continuing this program to educate the public about the dangers of falling through the gap between the station platform and train, the MTA has now put out a "Gap Rap".  The rap was created by the LIRR's medical director Dr. John Clarke.  He's not a rapper but he plays one on YouTube, having already created a rap for the MTA's H1N1 educational program last fall.  The MTA's website says the Gap Rap is "MTV ready".  Well, let's just say the MTA should probably stick to the business of getting the trains to run on time.


The interesting story behind this story, though, is the gap safety program itself.  In 2006, a teenager named Natalie Smead fell through the gap at Woodside and was killed by a train.  Her family sued the MTA and won a very substantial multi-million dollar settlement.  It was this death and lawsuit (which revealed that there had been hundreds of gap-related accidents) that forced the MTA to address the issue of the unusually wide gaps on the LIRR.  In addition to signage everywhere as well as posters and PSA's, the MTA has actually filled in the gap at many LIRR platforms.  


So this "Gap Rap" is the latest measure in the MTA's recent gap education program to prevent further accidents, deaths and massive lawsuits.

Mapping the NYC Subway System

After more than 10 years, a new version of the NYC Subway Map is coming out next month.  There is a write-up in today's TIMES talking about the changes to the new map; Manhattan is 30 percent wider, no more weekend schedule info (which was often wrong), less detail on bus connections.  But overall, the map sticks with the approach the MTA took starting in the late 1970s, after years of complaints about the iconic and somewhat modernist map by Massimo Vegnelli (pictured here).


Of course, this being the age of the Internet, the MTA does not have the last word on it's own maps anymore.  There is a competing map, downloadable to your iPhone, which has more than 250,000 fans of it's somewhat retro approach.  Using the Vegnelli design as a starting point, the Kick Map goes back to the future while also adding some of the more familiar surface references too, like streets and landmarks.  In fact, it's an admitted compromise between the two warring map factions.


In some ways, it is curious that NYC is the only major US city that takes the topographical approach.  The argument is that there needs to be a more direct connection to the street because there are so many tourists and new arrivals from all over the world.  However, tourist-stricken Washington DC has stuck with it's own modernist map since the system debuted in 1976.  Despite the MTA's improvements, I think the Kick Map has got the right idea for clarity and ease of use.  Now all I need is an iPhone....