By Colin Campbell 10/31/12 11:03pm

sandy recovery

Click to view the subway map in full. (Photo: MTA)

Buses, Trains and Subways Will Be Free Thursday and Friday

At a press conference late in the night, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced New Yorkers in the metropolitan area will have their public transit fares waved for the rest of the week. Of course, traveling into Lower Manhattan won’t be easy for Thursday, at least, where no subways are currently scheduled to travel.

“As a further encouragement to have people take mass transit, which is coming online piece by piece,” Mr. Cuomo began, citing the intensive traffic congestion problems plaguing Manhattan earlier today. “I am declaring a transportation emergency and authorizing the MTA to waive fares…through the end of the week, Thursday and Friday. So commuter rails, subways and buses.” Read More

By Colin Campbell 10/31/12 2:05pm

commuting

subway map

Limited Subway Service to Begin Tomorrow; Here’s the Schedule

Update 11/1 8:22:As of Friday morning, there will be service on the M and No. 7 trains has been restored in Queens and Brooklyn, though there is still no subway service into Lower Manhattan. You can read more about the changes to the service here.

Original post: At a press conference earlier this afternoon, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and MTA Chairman Joe Lhota announced that New York City’s subway system will restore service on a number of lines, leaving out a swath of territory south of 34th Street in Manhattan. Lower Manhattan was left out, they explained, because of the mass power outage in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

“It’s been an extraordinary amount of time and a lot of work and a lot of lack of sleep, but we’re going to continue to do it,” Mr. Lhota said. “Our goal is to, every day, get this service back to normal, back to the situation we were used to last week, and if not, even better.”

View the working transportation lines below, including other parts of the MTA, courtesy of Mr. Cuomo’s office: Read More

By Drew Grant 10/29/12 5:44pm

Blind dates

A man on a mission

One ‘Nite’ With You: Subway Cyrano Spotted!

Last week we brought you the most romantic one-’nite’ stand proposal ever, taped up over a West Fourth Street subway entrance. Do you like smoking dates? How about cheeseburgers and going dutch and romance maybe? Are you a female only? Seriously, this guy is smooth.

And while he never returned our calls, a colleague recently caught the MTA Lothario in the act, putting up his signs on a Brooklyn-bound A train Friday night. He was able to sneak some covert shots. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/27/12 5:34pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

(Getty)

MTA Shutting Down Subways, Buses and Trains Starting at 7 p.m. Sunday [Updated]

Update 10/28, 10:50: Governor Cuomo just announced that all MTA service will be shut down starting at 7 p.m. tonight. Full details from the MTA are at the bottom of this post.

“The transportation system is the lifeblood of the New York City region, and suspending all service is not a step I take lightly,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement. “But keeping New Yorkers safe is the first priority, and the best way to do that is to make sure they are out of harm’s way before gale-force winds can start wreaking havoc on trains and buses.” Read More

By Drew Grant 9/21/12 5:57pm

Viral Video

Video

tgif

TGIF Everyone: Lady Urinates, Proceeds to Take Shower on Subway [Video]


It’s been a long week: It’s getting colder, the nights are longer and Occupy Wall Street failed to overthrow the government once again. Isn’t it time you just let go, relaxed and thought of pleasant things like the sounds of gentle rain showers, the lapping ocean waves and delicious ice-cold lemonade being poured into a frosty gla—

On second thought, don’t relax. Hold it in. Read More

By Matt Chaban 7/31/12 10:21am

Planes Trains & Automobiles

NY+Alerts+Transit+Desktop

Finally! Google Maps Now Shows Subway Service Alerts, Closed Stations, Rerouted Trains

In its progressive/penny-pinching efforts to be a tech-forward transit agency, the MTA has outsourced much of its app development to outside firms and open-source programmers. Among the innovations out there, this meant the MTA’s official trip planner was integrated with Google Maps, as has been the case since 2008. The future is now!

This is good, because the MTA is often broken down and under repair in reality, so digitally would mean even more problems. But that is also where the interfaces did not connect: There was no integration between the Google Map routes and the MTA Service Alerts that warned straphangers about construction- and emergency-related service changes. That changes today. Read More

By Sarah Grothjan 6/25/12 6:26pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Finally, convenience! (Laptop Magazine)

Just What the Subway Needs: Free WiFi

Finally, New Yorkers can breathe a sigh of relief–subway stations may have just become the new haven for free WiFi.

At first, we thought this was a cruel (although slightly amusing) joke. Sooty floors and a lingering stench of week-old bodily fluid doesn’t usually draw the typical laptop crowd, be they freelance writers, event planners or Wall Street brokers, to crack open their MacBooks underground. Read More

By Michael Ewing 3/07/12 3:12pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Yum! (Gothamist)

Would You Eat off the Ground in a Subway Station?

A month ago, NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign’s first “State of the Station Platforms” was published, outlining the prevalence of twelve conditions down under the streets. The issues ranged from broken light fixtures to rats to garbage accessibility. It was an honest assessment: Subway platforms were not in the best condition, but they weren’t in the worst, either.

But an MTA official thinks quite differently about the cleanliness and conditions. Read More