Finally, there is crime. Since 1997, subway crime has been cut in half, but it rose slightly last year, by 2.1 percent, including a nearly 10 percent jump in assaults. Police argue that this a statistical blip; crime is already so low that it’s almost impossible to go lower. They also point out that enforcement remains high: Transit cops made 27,303 arrests last year, a 38.7 percent increase over 2002.
But coming as it does in the midst of budget cuts, the uptick in crime is foreboding. To save money, the MTA has closed 154 token booths in the past four years, and this winter announced plans to shutter another 160—together, about 10 percent of the overall total. Removing those “eyes and ears,” say observers, is the first step toward inviting criminals back. While the MTA intends to install cameras to monitor all unstaffed areas, workers have seen enough taped-over cameras to wonder how well that’ll really work. “It’s so easy to do,” says a transit worker who asked to be anonymous. “We’ll be out in Livonia, and we’ll go fix a camera, and ten minutes get a call from the cops saying ‘Come back, there’s tape on the camera again.’”
Of course, that seems like the tamest child’s play compared with the specter of terrorism, which spooks subway riders in a way that nothing else ever has. Back in May 2002, Nicholas Casale—then the deputy director of security for the MTA—took a team of detectives on an exploratory trip. They entered three different ventilation and emergency-exit points for the subway, and climbed all the way down to the track. One of them was near “the portal,” the point where a tunnel heads out under the East River. Though the city had claimed to have instituted better security in the wake of 9/11, it was still possible for someone to plant a bomb in a place that would cause horrific damage: a tunnel that would flood with water.
“It would start flowing, and it’s not going to stop,” says Casale. “How much water is there in the East River and the Atlantic? And you can’t drop a diver down there with a cork.” Indeed, according to Casale, a recent assessment of the effects of a breach on the 63rd Street river tunnel found that it would cause thousands of immediate casualties.
Casale’s whistle-blower credibility suffered when he was later charged with fraud (on an unrelated matter) and fired from the MTA. And Reuter maintains that security has been upgraded and that, among other things, the NYCT has installed police surveillance booths at the entrance to each riverbed tunnel. Reuter won’t give further details about its preventive measures for security reasons, but he insists that “you wouldn’t be able to just walk on with a bomb and bring one of our [tunnels] down. We feel fairly comfortable that we’re as secure as we can be. We’ve protected ourselves against what could be the major catastrophic types of problems.”
Concerns about lax subway security won’t go away, though. Workers report seeing the security booths unmanned, and in January, New York Post reporter Sam Smith waltzed into several unguarded maintenance areas of the subway. A week later, he found a complete set of blueprints for the Atlantic Avenue subway station—including critical information such as the location and size of the main pillars—in a public trash can.
McAnanama, of the Transport Workers Union, contends that the blueprints were probably left by a careless contractor, which the union points to as a weak link in the security of the subway. When a private company is hired to do work in the subway, the main contractor is subject to a background check and full vetting—but nothing close to what MTA employees undergo. And if the contractor hires subcontractors, they receive even less scrutiny. “They just get their hats and clearance badges and they can walk right out onto the track. And they carry big, heavy bags around without anyone asking what’s in it, really,” says Foley, the union rep. “Get a job with a contractor. It’s the easiest way to get access to the system.” Subcontractors are often given universal keys that work on hundreds of doors.
Granted, union workers have their reasons for bad-mouthing contract workers: The contractors are, after all, taking jobs away from union members. But if security is even half as porous as critics say, all other potential subway hazards—accidental fires, radio malfunctions—seem like mere inconveniences.
For all their scary dimensions, most of the subway’s problems remain in the realm of “what-if” scenarios. Sure, lightning could strike at any time. What of it? The hazards of fires and water are real but manageable, says Reuter; other issues present graver, more immediate risks and therefore get priority, like the 1,400 switches that route trains from one track to another. If one fails, trains can collide. That pushes maintenance of the switches to the top of the to-do pile, and the fans a bit further down.
The debate over subway maintenance boils down to one simple argument that is, as it always has been, about money. As the union puts it: If basic maintenance areas have seen almost one-third less funding than needed, why not abandon new projects—such as the Communications-Based Train Control, or even the epic Second Avenue tunnel—until more of the basic stuff is in a “state of good repair”? Because, say the advocates of expansion, the subway needs to keep pace with a growing city. “We can move the number of people we move fine, but who cares? We need to grow,” says Alexis Perrotta, an associate planner at the Regional Plan Association. “The subway is an economic engine.”
At one point while exploring the system, I saw a set of stairs leading up off a platform to a door. I walked up and peered in through the window on the door—it was a relay room, just like the one that burned at Chambers Street, filled with dozens of rows of relays clicking away like a field of crickets. One subway worker told me he’d recently been inside and noticed that there were no alarms, the smoke detector had no power, and the doors were locked only with small, angled bolts you’d see on any brownstone. (The window wouldn’t be hard to break, either, he figured: “Boom, and you’re in.”) Just outside the door, I saw a little human nest: a bunch of newspapers, a dirty blanket, a bottle of Snapple, and a small jar of jam. It was the resting place for some homeless person, set up a few feet from the subway’s century-old signaling system.
Then I traveled down to West Fourth Street, where at the end of the F platform you can watch through the glass as subway workers monitor an area of track, the lights blinking as subway cars rattle by. The subway is the blood-flow of Manhattan—linking the poorest reaches of the Bronx to the tony gallery zone of Chelsea. That’s why the system’s problems can never be brushed aside: When these arteries seize up, the city is no more.
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