Have I told you lately that I love the subway . . .

New Yorkers love to hate the subway. I don’t get it. For $2.75 you can get anywhere within the entire NYC metropolitan area – 304 square miles. Manhattan. Brooklyn. Queens. ‘da Bronx. Transfers from one line to another are free. What’s not to like?

West 72nd Street Station

I love the subway. It’s a miracle in my book. Take my morning commute: it’s a three-minute walk to the West 72^nd Street line near our apartment – six stops later (roughly nine minutes), I’m dropped off two minutes from my Barnard College office at West 116^th Street. 14 minutes door to door – sweet. It took me more time to get from our house at the intersection of N.W. 43^rd Street/N.W. 53^rd Avenue to the Millhopper Publix.

Is it crowded and hot in the summer and crowded and cold in the winter?  Absolutely – but when you walk down those steps to your station, the next train is usually only 3-4 minutes away – rain, sleet or snow (well maybe not when it snowed 24 inches the day after Christmas in 2010 or when Hurricane Sandy hit the city in 2012 – but you get my point) and you DO see the most interesting people every day. The subway also ushers in a bit of humanity to New York City – it’s common to see people give up their seats to an elderly or disabled person, or a pregnant woman.

The "el"

The subway is an engineering marvel. Its beginnings hail back to the late 1800s, and follow the opening of the els - trains that ran on tracks nearly three stories above city avenues.  These elevated trains dramatically changed the way New Yorkers viewed their city and lived their lives. The els ushered in an urban life that still defines NYC today – being able to live, work, and shop in different parts of the city and to interact with people from different neighborhoods and backgrounds. 

After the success of the els, New York City’s residents demanded an enhanced rapid transit system and city authorities decided to build a subway that would meet two objectives: it would quickly and efficiently move people about in crowded Manhattan and also move them out of crowded Manhattan.  Subway lines would extend out even further into vast tracts of undeveloped land, where new neighborhoods could be created, helping to turn a cramped island city into a sprawling metropolitan area.

A subway station in 1906

One of the early chief engineers for the new subway system was William Barclay Parsons, an 1882 graduate of Columbia University’s School of Mines (today’s engineering school – Jenni’s alma mater). Opened in 1904, the subway's electric cars took passengers from City Hall to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the newly renamed and relocated Columbia University in Morningside Heights, its present location on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Today, the New York City subway system is one of the busiest and most extensive in the world, serving nearly five million passengers every day with 26 train lines operating on over 800 miles of track. 

Me? I’m loving it. I’m extremely happy to be one of those five million passengers and you won’t hear me complaining. After 30+ years of daily driving on Gainesville’s crazy roads, I’m just happy to let someone else take the wheel!