A year and a half ago a new subway station opened three blocks away from my apartment. It was so exciting for my neighbors and me. We'd waited a long time for the station to open. In fact, plans for the subway line had been in the works for a century. A century! If I were a transit official I would've abandoned all hope after a week, if that. It's taken me about a week just to write this blog post, and it requires zero manual labor.
Fortunately, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is more motivated than I am, and it built a beautiful station. It's bright, it's clean, it has colorful mosaics.
More importantly, from my perspective: I can travel to different neighborhoods much more quickly thanks to this station. I can get to Midtown in 10 minutes. Greenwich Village: 25 minutes. Park Slope: 40 minutes. It's made my life so much easier.
For the most part.
I do have one complaint. Picture this: There are two escalators several hundred feet from the turnstiles that typically move upward toward the entrance during evening rush hour. As you might imagine, the station is very busy during evening rush hour. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of commuters use the escalators during evening rush hour.
Here's the issue: For the past two months, one of the escalators has not been operational during evening rush hour. At all. This leaves hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of commuters with two options: Either wait in a lengthy and chaotic line to use the escalator that is running, or walk up the escalator that isn't running.
Neither option is appealing to me. I wrote a tweet to the MTA, kindly asking for an explanation. I didn't receive a response. Therefore, I'm escalating (see what I did there?) the issue here. I didn't want it to come to this, but I now have no other choice but to air my grievances in an entry on a comedy blog, one that took nearly a week to write.
It may be helpful to you if I describe the problematic escalator in further detail. It is so, so long. Approximately 2 1/2 miles, give or take. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to an actual stairway to heaven.
Still, I'd rather walk up those steps than wait on the line for the running escalator. I'm in the minority; I'd estimate only 10 percent of commuters, likely less, opt for that climb.
It's a tough climb. I'm not even sure Sir Edmund Hillary would've attempted it.
For starters, it's been very hot in the station during the summer. The heat wears you down. By the time I'm a quarter of the way up the stairs, I am huffing, I am puffing, I am wiping beads of sweat off my forehead, my sleeves are damp. There's a reason why there's a newsstand that sells water and Gatorade on the train platform. It's to make sure that people like me will stay hydrated during the arduous journey home.
Even more challenging than the heat: the behavior of certain commuters as they're hiking up the escalator. Last week a man attempted to run up the steps with an umbrella in his hand. As he passed me he whacked me on the side of my face with the umbrella. It stung. For a very brief moment, I paused, expecting him to turn around and apologize. He didn't. He kept running. Running for his life up the escalator. Running further and further out of my view, until he disappeared. I don't know if he made it to the top.
And then there was the man in front of me on the escalator yesterday. He didn't run up the steps. On the contrary, he very ... slowly ... put ... one ... foot ... on ... a ... step ... followed ... by ... the ... other ... foot. I can only assume he either was a) enjoying the hike at his leisurely pace, or b) thinking, "What the f--- did I get myself into"?
I sidestepped him and pressed on. I never heard from him again.
I'm kind of glad I waited until now to write this blog entry, because I have some good news: Today the escalator was completely blocked off, with a sign noting that it was under repair. My days of sweaty climbs may finally be over — assuming the plans to fix the escalator don't continue for the next century.
