Last month I shared news of a proposed change to the NYC subway which could end 24/7 service. This was just an idea and is not likely to happen.
While ending 24/7 service would be seen as a negative change by many, the new year saw a big positive at NYC subway stations.
The NYC subway can be overly hot, crowded and uncomfortable so you’re probably wondering what this improvement just might be.
Catching the train in New York City is like a crapshoot. You never know just when your train might arrive or how long you can be stuck waiting.
I was always envious of the train stations in foreign countries which had displays letting you know what time your train should arrive and/ or how long it will be until the train arrives.
Then these kind of displays started popping up in NYC subway stations.
Now, you’ll no longer have to guess how long you’ll be waiting. TimeOut NY reports that, “All of NYC’s subway stations now have countdown clocks“.
This is great news and also pretty impressive when you consider just how massive the transit system is in NYC!
It turns out that the MTA actually met one of it’s infrastructure deadlines which was to install countdown clocks in every station by the end of 2017. To meet this goal, crews finished installing the clocks at 22 stations along the 7 line on Sunday, December 31!
TimeOut mentions how this was a pretty impressive feat. By the end of May only 179 stations out of 472 had the countdown clocks.
How do you feel about the countdown clocks- is this a big improvement for the NYC subway or it is just catching up with the times?
Find out more from TimeOut NY here.
Nice to have but all it does is puts a small bandaid on a huge underlying issue. We have a huge problem with outdated switches / equipment throughout the system. Performance is only going to get worse before the system collapses or there’s a huge modernization of the system.
Impressive? MTA spends $10 billion a year and the stations are full of trash and rats and smell like urine. Think about it. Billions of dollars spent, thousands of employees and they can’t even sweep the stations? Clocks or not, the MTA is a colossal failure.