Notes from the New York Subway

Far from being a no-go zone, the Subway is mostly clean, cheap, and safe. Just don't make eye contact with its resident schizos.

I must start with an embarrassing confession: I allowed myself to get Twitterbrained. Videos depicting various scenes of violence and disorder in New York have been crossing my timeline for the last few months, giving the impression of a city plagued by chaos and Gotham City levels of lawlessness. Just before arriving, the X algorithm subjected me to a video of a man being shot and killed on the Subway during the middle of morning rush hour. Upon my arrival to the Big Apple, news broke of a commuter being pushed at random into a train and losing his life. And all this after the National Guard had been deployed across the city to bolster safety on the public transit system.

The sum of these stories bouncing around my brain led me to ask my friends from New York if I would be safe to take the Subway across town once my late-evening flight arrived at JFK. They replied with bemusement: ‘of course, why wouldn’t you be?’.

First, the good. I was pleasantly surprised to find the system generally clean and well maintained. The stations are largely well kept, with many adorning flashy new display and information boards. Several are undergoing renovations, updating the interiors and improving accessibility. I travelled on one of the new R211 stock, and its sleek interiors and flashy internal screens made me feel like I was in one of those videos of the clean, civilised metros of Seoul or Chongqing or wherever that apparently don’t exist in the West anymore. And best of all, the Subway still has a flat fare of $2.90 (~£2.30), which for someone used to London Underground prices felt like a bargain.

As for the bad, the system seems prone to delays, and the pathfinding is anything but intuitive when things go wrong. I was also shocked by the infrequencies of the trains on central lines during the middle of the day (up to ten minutes on some occasions!).

And finally, the ugly. It is no secret that the Subway is a stand-in home for much of the city’s homeless population. Some of the Subway’s wandering inhabitants seem to have simply fallen on hard times and be seeking shelter from New York’s gusty and cold streets, but it is not they who are garnering all the negative press. Rather, it is the significant contingent of visibly mentally disturbed and/or drug addicted residents of the Subway that are the cause for concern. Traversing the network at all times of the day and night, they can often be heard before they are seen, screaming incoherently or quasi-busking by screeching out songs.

The confined nature of the Subway makes these interactions especially uncomfortable, as there is no chance to cross the road or leave the room once the ranting schizophrenic approaches you. Instead, a hushed silence falls upon the Subway car once one enters. Gazes are lowered to avoid making eye contact with them, and darting eyes look for potential allies should help be needed. Bags are clutched more tightly as some passengers try to subtly distance themselves from the unwelcome fellow-traveller.

I was baptised into this unspoken routine on my first full day here, as a raggedy, hunched man stumbled onto my Uptown train, immediately instructing passengers to not be scared of him. He then preceded with a rather amusing monologue, chastising his fellow passengers for wasting so much money on rent whilst boasting that he lived in the heart of Manhattan for only $2.90. His bit took a somewhat darker turn once the topic turned to his vexatious ex-wife, whom he blamed for his present ills. He then started to describe the ways in which he would get his revenge on her as he slowly shuffled closer towards me. A fashionable Columbia student in her late-teens, iced-latte in hand, jolted away from the centre of the carriage to take refuge behind me, using me as a human shield. We exchanged smiles, and I started to understand the social expectations that someone like me had on the Subway (my mind turned to Daniel Penny in this moment). I duly played my part as the human shield, any lingering fear gradually dissipating as the guy’s ramblings returned to punchy one-liners that gave the comedy club I attended that night a run for their money. However, the boxcutter he held in his hand and waved around liberally convinced me to leave the show early, as iced-latte girl and I scuttled off the train at the next station (my biggest regret of the trip so far is not nabbing her number – would have made for a good story).

Yet claims of the Subway becoming lawless are overstated. Pairs of NYPD cops slouching against a platform pillar are a common sight throughout the network, as are operator announcements that police are present at the next station should anyone require their assistance. However, rather than reassuring me, their presence does the opposite. Officers often plonk themselves just a few steps away from a homeless person who has passed out, or one with a crackpipe in hand, or one shouting incoherently. But instead of intervening, the officers stand idly by, continuing with their inane conversations. It gives the impression that this kind of behaviour is state-sanctioned, that I am the weird one for thinking it merits the intervention of law enforcement, and that there is no recourse for the law-abiding to put a stop to it.

The Subway is therefore in no meaningful sense a no-go zone, as very few places assigned that label actually are. Riding the Subway has not been a predominantly unsafe experience, but an unpleasant and uncomfortable one. And for many people, especially women, the levels of discomfort and anxiety elicited by these experiences have rendered the cheapest and most efficient way to traverse the city an option of last resort.

But this predicament is one that can be changed quickly – as I have written, the high concentration of crime amongst a small number of individuals, and the effectiveness of incarceration at incapacitating them, means that safety and order could be instituted relatively easily. For most of the Subway’s troublemakers, I imagine some kind of forced sectioning to a mental asylum or rehabilitation facility is the most appropriate form of confinement. I also think this would be the most compassionate solution – although forcibly sweeping people away against their will can seem callous, allowing them to decay and their bodies to (often literally) rot away on the streets until they inevitably die of an overdose seems far crueller. However, as Douglas Murray’s recent documentary shows, America has mostly adopted a very different approach so far, meaning travellers to New York may well be inducted into the Subway’s pantomime routine for some time yet.