Bill de Blasio, who mostly takes boats and cars to get around, rode the subway this morning, and was super pumped about it. Only a man who has not spent half his life waiting for the subway would be this enthused about taking the R train.
The daily agony of waiting for a train is a well-known problem in New York, and one that’s gotten increasingly worse over the last few years. Even celebrated playwright Samuel Beckett addressed subway purgatory in his 1953 work Waiting for Godot, which — little-known fact — was actually written about waiting for the G train.
But in an effort to #StandUp4Transportation, de Blasio has been tweeting to encourage New Yorkers to take public transit — something that, frankly, those without access to boats are already doing. Actually, the fact that most of New York relies on public transportation to get around is one of the major reasons the subway has been so unreliable recently. The MTA has frequently stated that increased ridership is at fault for many delays, and it’s even dispatched platform conductors at busy stations to help combat the problem.
New Yorkers deserve a subway system we can actually rely on. If continuing on with our daily lives is what’s going to convince Congress to invest in much-needed infrastructure upgrades, then that’s the kind of activism a lazy person like me can get behind. But really, de Blasio riding the subway to City Hall is just one more person taking up space on an already-overcrowded R train.
