This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation.
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Mass transit makes New York City possible. There simply isn’t enough space across the five boroughs for everyone to own a car and drive. The advent of the subways 120 years ago turned a dense downtown surrounded by rural communities into a sprawling metropolis.
And it’s New York’s very dependence on transit that makes it hard for us to be grateful for its existence. Frequent delays, sardine-packed commutes and long wait times leave few reasons to thank the MTA.
But in the spirit of the holiday, I asked my colleagues to put on rose-colored glasses and share the parts of the city’s beleaguered transit system they’re actually thankful for.
Andrew Giambrone, one of Gothamist’s crackerjack assistant editors, said he’s “thankful for the two train operators who in the past few months held the R train at my station as I came barreling down the steps to the platform.”
Other folks in the newsroom shared his appreciation for the transit workers who run the subways and buses.
Deputy editor Stephanie Clary was grateful for the Franklin Avenue Shuttle’s “train operators who honk the horn when kids wave from an overpass.”
“Can make their day,” she added.
Others said they find solace in rare moments of beauty within our dingy old system.
Arts and culture reporter Hannah Frishberg said she loves the “Masstransiscope” art installation, which creates a flipbook-style optical illusion for riders on the B and Q lines as they approach the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn. Public safety reporter Samantha Max said she adores “Showtime and all the incredibly talented performers who practice their craft on the subway.”
And Verónica Del Valle, associate producer on WNYC’s “Morning Edition,” said she’s “thankful for all the five-minute subway friends you get to make every day.”
“My favorite friend recently is the lady who told me that Matt Gaetz was removing himself from AG consideration a full five minutes before the New York Times push notification,” she said.
Despite all the cheer from my colleagues, it was still a difficult mental exercise for this transit scribe to think up something to be thankful for. (I’ve covered the guts of the subways for too long to not be jaded.)
But I can say I’m thankful for the satisfaction of a cross-platform transfer between local and express lines that pull into the same station simultaneously. I’m thankful for the glorious view of New York Harbor while riding across the Manhattan or Williamsburg bridges. And I can certainly declare I’m thankful for this newsletter’s readers, whose thirst for information has made this email list into a real community. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Question from Pa in Manhattan
Instead of congestion pricing, which is essentially just another toll or tax for the MTA, why didn’t they just put the tolls on the Lower Manhattan bridges instead?
Answer
Elected officials in New York actually proposed tolling the East River bridges decades ago, which would have amounted to an alternate version of congestion pricing. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then-Mayor John Lindsay floated the idea of charging drivers to use the crossings as a way to prevent a subway fare hike. Around the same time, New York state officials sought to implement tolls on the bridges as a way to reduce traffic in Manhattan in order to comply with the Clean Air Act (Democratic congressmembers from New York later amended the act to prevent the tolls from being necessary). Technology has since made toll booths obsolete — and now fees from drivers are collected by E-ZPass or automated license plate readers. The new technology allows the MTA to establish tolls across a wider congestion zone that includes all Manhattan’s local roads below 60th Street.