Those countdown clocks that tell straphangers when the next subway train will arrive — a luxury that hipsters on the L train have, for some reason, already enjoyed for years — are finally being spread throughout the rest of the city. For now they’ve been placed at a few stops in the Bronx and are “scheduled” — a very flexible concept in MTA-world — to be installed in all stations along numbered subway lines by the middle of 2011. Which, as anyone who has used the L line can tell you, is good news, because knowing when your train is arriving does indeed make the wait less soul-crushing (unless the sign is messing with you; see photo).
But actually, we submit that placing the clocks on the subway platforms is going about things all wrong. Where they really need to be is on the street, outside of the subway entrances, so drunk people know whether they have time to grab that slice of pizza before heading underground. The heart-wrenching conundrum of getting food at the risk of missing the next train home is something that no drunk person should be forced to grapple with at four in the morning.
Riders wait - & ‘see’ [NYP]
