Commuters' group report: '10 plagues of the subway'

By Matthew Sweeney and Marlene Naanes | msweeney@am-ny.com

May 8, 2008

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A rat on the platform, a gag-inducing smell in the car, and watching your transfer train pull away just as your train gets to the station. On any given trip there's going to be something to startle, disgust, or annoy riders.

Leave it to the Straphangers Campaign to release its own informal list of "ten plagues of the subway" Thursday to account for some of the most common rider problems.

Overcrowding. Flooding. Filthy seats. And the list goes on.

"I've already been chastised for leaving out rats, cockroaches and subway preachers," said Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for NYPIRG's Straphangers Campaign.

Thursday was an especially tough day for Rosa Lopez, 28. The East New York mother of four said she was traveling with three of her children when the L train stopped running. Her only option was to take the M, but the elevators to the platform were broken. She couldn't manage the stairs with a 10-month old in a stroller. She paid for a cab.

"It's dangerous to have a stroller with people running up and down the stairs," Lopez said. "And elevators are out all the time."

Traveling with a newborn made the Straphangers list, in part, Russianoff said, because of his own personal experiences.

"We have been, and continue to, work hard to provide the type of mass transit experience that the greatest city in the world deserves," Charles Seaton, a transit spokesman, said in response to the list.

It's undeniable that the subway is better than it once was, but there are still those filthy, damp, and dark stations that bother Dalien Duquerette, 17, of Flatbush. He said that the Franklin Avenue stop on the C is the worst, with holes along the platform walls and rats scurrying all over the tracks.

"You feel more unsafe," he said. "You feel dirtier. It's dark. It's kind of creepy."

For the germ-concerned, the subway car is an overflowing petri dish of microorganisms.

"It feels oily and slippery," Debbie Park said, explaining why she carried hand sanitizer and refused to hang on to the poles on the trains.

A new - and near-invisible - force that was laid claim to the subway in recent days is the bed bug. A city official was giving a talk to a Brooklyn community group when he went off script and mentioned that he had seen bedbugs on wooden benches in three stations.

The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development was quick to point out that the official -- whose comments hit the blogosphere and went "viral" -- was speaking from personal experience.