After a recent video showing a subway rider throwing spaghetti at another passenger, the MTA is thinking about taking away everyone’s morning coffee.
Because of one mutant nitwit teenager, food and drink of any kind may now be prohibited underground.
I understand and support the banning of food, with the smell, the rats, the obnoxiousness of it all, but a morning cup of coffee?
When MTA board member Charles Moerdler suggested at a recent board meeting that imbibing anything on the subway be outlawed, fellow member Doreen Frasca giddily clapped, called out “hear, hear!” and said it was a “swell idea.”
Moerdler chastised us slovenly masses, lecturing that it time for us all to “wake up.”
Without our morning coffee?
But take heart, subway riders. If a cup of joe can no longer help awaken you on your commute to work in the morning, perhaps someone screaming in your ear will.
The MTA recently signed an agreement with AT&T and T-Mobile to provide cell phone service on Manhattan subway stations.
“For too long, the subway system has been an information black hole in our lives,” said MTA chairman Jay Walder.
But not anymore. By the end of 2011, we will be treated to Wall Streeters bellowing into their Blackberries during rush hour. Thanks MTA!
But there won’t be cell phone usage allowed on the subways themselves. So let’s see if I have this straight: If you’re trapped between stations you won’t be able to call anyone, but if you’re safely on a subway platform you can blab away to your heart’s content?
Swell idea!
Perhaps if Walder, Moerdler, Frasca and company actually rode the subways with us, they might see what the realities are. This might be a shock to their systems, but in many ways the subway is the last bastion of civility in NYC. People from all backgrounds and class levels coexist in peace.
OK, there might be an occasional spaghetti throwing incident, but the overwhelming majority of subway riders behave in a civil, polite manner. In fact, the subways are one of the last public arenas where we can get some peace and quiet.
But you’d have to actually use the system to know this. And as I’ve written before, until MTA execs are mandated to ride the subways with us they will never get it.
So enjoy your morning cup of coffee on the quiet platform. Your life is about to change.
I agree with them. Food and drink are meant for home, restaurants or outdoor eating areas…not subways where much of their garbage is left on the floor or the seats…and occasionally on another passenger when the train lurches forward or screeches to a stop.
As for cell phone usage, I sure would not want to listen to other people’s conversations while riding in a subway car. If you think subways are quiet, you have not ridden on the LIRR, Metro North or other trains out of town.
Michael:
I have ridden on both Metro North and the LIRR many times. On the latter, I’ve seen young men drink beer, scream and puke on the seats, as well as heard loud cell phone conversations both on the trains and platform. I’ll take the subway any day of the week.
The biggest problem is that too many people like to use the floor or seats of the train, or the platform or tracks as their personal garbage can. Yes, some of us are considerate enough to hold our garbage until we pass one of the many trash cans in the system, but unfortunately, many are not.
I recently saw two young men riding in with me on the train to the Staten Island Ferry in the morning. They had been drinking sodas from bottles. As the door opened at one of the stations, they threw their empty bottles out the door onto the platform. The conductor happened to be in that car and yelled at them to go out and pick up their bottles.
At first they didn’t pay any attention, then she came over to them and repeated herself. They picked them up and we were on our way. They said “what are we supposed to do with them?” and I told them “I take it with me, and when I get out, I put it into the trash can on the platform. That’s what you should do–that way we don’t have to see garbage lying all over the place.”
I rarely take the bus instead of the subway, but twice last weekend I rode the M57 bus across town. Both times someone talked endlessly, and loudly, on a cell phone. My question: don’t the people on the other end of these calls ever say anything? Why is the endless verbiage always issuing from the person sitting next to me? I’ll think twice before taking a bus again.