Is it really SO difficult?

[6 Lexington Ave]

I'm curious, is it really so difficult for the TA to maintain an acceptable appearance in stations?? By acceptable I mean CLEAN. For crying out loud, some stations sparkle (West Side IRT) and others are dumps (59th st. express lex). I think it's something that can change and it should. Any opinions??

[Union Tpke]

At the Kew Gardens station there is peeling paint on the ceiling an the tiles are disgusting.

[Turbo19]

I wouldn't say it's difficult, rather the TA doesn't want to invest the resources to keep a uniform appearance across the board.

 

I for one would hope this changes, as aesthetics a have a major affect on passenger perception, for better or worse.

[6 Lexington Ave]

I wouldn't say it's difficult, rather the TA doesn't want to invest the resources to keep a uniform appearance across the board.

 

I for one would hope this changes, as aesthetics a have a major affect on passenger perception, for better or worse.

Tell me about it!!

[Turbo19]

Tell me about it!!

Yeah, and the way things are going it's no doubt for worse.

[Orion VII 4 Life]

Many areas of the stations (in/around entrances) in Midtown are maintained by private companies, usually the owner/manager of the building the entrance is in, which is why a lot of them are nice, modern-looking and kept clean unlike any other station entrance in the city. The MTA themselves also seems to prioritize keeping the Midtown stations neat and clean for the tourists, while running absolute dump stations in the outer boroughs for the people who really matter, the people that use the system every day.

 

The tourists already have a bad image of our city as it is... don't care so much that their station is clean and instead give the same (or higher) quality maintenance we see in Midtown to the outer boroughs. As the TA has increased its quality of maintenance over the years, ridership has gone up, and if they keep doing a better job at maintenance the ridership will continue to go up.

[Kamen Rider]

keeping the subway pristine when it's used by 8 million people a day is basicly impossible.

[Roadcruiser1]

I agree with Kamen Rider that it's impossible. This city has 8 million people living in it and millions more visiting and leaving everyday. In fact as I will quote from New York: A Documentary Film. "New York City is extremely clean for a city with that many people." There are cities that are way worse than New York. It's not as bad as most people put it.

[peacemak3r]

Cleaning stations doesn't come free unfortunately.

[MHV9218]

Nothing is too hard to be done. But many things are too expensive to be done!

[bobtehpanda]

Some stations can't be cleaned up because some of it is water damage (because in the 1930s, protecting against that wasn't really a thing.)

Honestly, the best we could probably hope for is MTA contracting out the cleaning of stations, PA-style. It's far too colossal of a task for any one organization to cover.

[Orion VII 4 Life]

I agree with Bob, in most places in house security and maintenance is a thing of the past, it saves money to contract out, and most big name national firms do a good job doing what they do. Hell, there's plenty of small time guys that do great work, PANYNJ I believe has a rule that locally based, minority/woman owned businesses are given bidding priority on contracts for maintenance services and some other things, and their facilities are usually pretty damn clean. I also believe the company MTA hires to clean the LIRR concourse at Penn exclusively hires the disabled, so if they were given a contract for the subways it would work out great for the city's disabled population. Hate to say it, MTA could learn some things from PANYNJ, of course as long as MTAPD doesn't start acting like the PAPD.

 

Nothing is too hard to be done. But many things are too expensive to be done!

Except there's way too many maintenance folks working in Midtown to keep tourist stations clean. Shift those guys to the outer boroughs and we're spending the same amount of money.

[TeeCoZee]

I once saw a kid eating a bag of M&Ms on the train. Upon exiting the station, the kid still had the empty bag in his hand. His mother literally slapped the bag onto the floor, scolding him for doing a job that somebody else "should be doing". And that story is my basic representation of New Yorkers. In a way, I see a sense of arrested development for those that grow up in this dirty ass city. It's not going to change. We are all "set" in our ways.

[Turbo19]

I once saw a kid eating a bag of M&Ms on the train. Upon exiting the station, the kid still had the empty bag in his hand. His mother literally slapped the bag onto the floor, scolding him for doing a job that somebody else "should be doing". And that story is my basic representation of New Yorkers. In a way, I see a sense of arrested development for those that grow up in this dirty ass city. It's not going to change. We are all "set" in our ways.

That's perception is just influenced in part by how horrible the stations actually look. If they were cleaner perception would change, and a fair amount of people would be more respectful to MTA property.

 

At any rate, the excuse of the system size isn't cutting it. It's obvious the MTA is not willing to invest the financial resources to clean house.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

keeping the subway pristine when it's used by 8 million people a day is basicly impossible.

I'm sorry but the stations can be clean if the ran a more efficient system.  It's interesting how they're able to "manage" to keep some stations clean while other stations see absolutely NO sort of maintenance whatsoever.  

 

 

I agree with Kamen Rider that it's impossible. This city has 8 million people living in it and millions more visiting and leaving everyday. In fact as I will quote from New York: A Documentary Film. "New York City is extremely clean for a city with that many people." There are cities that are way worse than New York. It's not as bad as most people put it.

I beg to differ... Manhattan is absolutely DISGUSTING.  Even 5th Avenue is a dump.  I was in the city today and was utterly repulsed at how dirty the streets are.  Someone had actually thrown up over on 6th Avenue and it was everywhere.  Then you've got the bums camping out on 5th Avenue.  Park Avenue is relatively clean but the actual streets look like a 3rd world country and are in desperate need of repaving.  I don't understand how we have all of these damn tourists coming here and we can't find the money to keep our streets better paved and our sidewalks looking cleaner. It's a total embarrassment and a disgrace. Since Bloomberg has taken office, this city has become dirtier and the streets are more and more run down and filthy. The only area of the city that looks somewhat "tolerable" are parts of the Upper East Side. The rest of it (no matter how expensive) is just dirty.  That's why I could never live in Manhattan.  I just get too repulsed after a while.  

[Vistausss]

 

The tourists already have a bad image of our city as it is... don't care so much that their station is clean and instead give the same (or higher) quality maintenance we see in Midtown to the outer boroughs. As the TA has increased its quality of maintenance over the years, ridership has gone up, and if they keep doing a better job at maintenance the ridership will continue to go up.

 

Yeah, but some tourists are just *ssholes. I've heard some fellow Dutch people about dirty subway stations in NY while they were living in Amsterdam. Well, I can share a lot of stories about dirty subway stations in Amsterdam too. Quite a few of 'em are rather dirty or even detoriated. Clearly some tourists are just biased and don't see the dirt in their own cities/countries.

[pjbr40]

the should do "adopt a station"  program. They have that on highway here in NJ. it help to keep highway clean of debris

[peacemak3r]

the should do "adopt a station"  program. They have that on highway here in NJ. it help to keep highway clean of debris

 

Um, they have that same program for highways here in NYC and let me say this, it's not working in 80% of the areas that are "adopted."

[bobtehpanda]

I'm sorry but the stations can be clean if the ran a more efficient system.  It's interesting how they're able to "manage" to keep some stations clean while other stations see absolutely NO sort of maintenance whatsoever. 

 

No. No single organization can handle this much cleaning, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Most public and private companies with this amount of square footage hire private cleaners to do their work (retailers notwithstanding, since they have managers for individual locations on-site at all times).

 

Granted, there's only so much a private cleaner can do - you need security guards to keep the homeless out of the system, and some stations need to be torn down and built anew due to the water damage issues, but the general day-to-day cleanliness can only be handled by contracted cleaning companies (not company, because no company has this sort of scale). If it works for the Port Authority and every piece of infrastructure that they operate, then it can work on the with a few minor adjustments.

 

(Also, before any comparisons to Metro-North or LIRR are made, keep in mind that those only receive bursts of passengers right around the time the train rolls in, so there aren't nearly as many people moving in and out, loitering, and littering on a daily basis. Plus, the system's too expensive/the stations are too far away for the city bums to hang out in.)

[Vistausss]

Also, the LIRR and MNRR don't provide overnight service on all routes and some routes see way fewer trains than the most infrequent subway route (I guess the ?) like the Lower Montauk for example with only a few trains a day.

[bobtehpanda]

Also, the LIRR and MNRR don't provide overnight service on all routes and some routes see way fewer trains than the most infrequent subway route (I guess the ?) like the Lower Montauk for example with only a few trains a day.

 

The Lower Montauk was sold off in February.

[GojiMet86]

The Lower Montauk was sold off in February.

 

Do they still run LIRR trains on it, or is all traffic redirected to the Main Line?

[Vistausss]

The Lower Montauk was sold off in February.

 

Oops, my bad, I meant the Montauk line from Babylon to Montauk. But even so: the NYA&R locomotives are mostly owned by LIRR so technically it's still using the Lower Montauk branch for freight. Anyway, the Lower Montauk doesn't matter at all in my point because there are no platforms to clean unless you want the LIRR to really clean the abandoned Richmond Hill station...

I'm sorry for the confusion about the LM vs Montauk branch.

[LTA1992]

Cleanliness begins with the passengers. Passengers who complain about it being dirty. But continue to litter. The MTA does what it can but like owning a house, fix/clean one thing and something else will pop up.

[RollOver]

I can't blame a train, bus or the city itself for the people being nasty. What can I do about it?