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Sunday, September 24, 2006

 

Filthy, Unclean Seats on Buses and trains

That filth wouldn't be a big deal to someone who hadn't seen where it came from.
Sometimes a homeless person will sit down, which is Ok, and fair. But what if a person has defecated, which certainly happens, and then sits down on a seat, which certainly happens, and next come you or me sitting down on that same seat, and guess what we will leave with glued behind?

So the question is if the MTA ever sanitize their seats. Nobody is expecting immaculate results, but at least clean to the point where it's hygienically safe to ride without having to ride standing out of fear of having feces smeared onto your clothes. Bad hygiene brings about disease. Disease ought to be a serious enough issue to care about.

But it appears that nobody cares. You see seats black of filth, and the next thing you see may be a homeless person who has a fecal odor. I mean, poor that dude, but how about sanitizing the seats? Isn't basic hygiene an issue to the MTA? Well, I know it is because I've seen people cleaning up in Metro stations, but as far as the seats are concerned, in which people will actually sit down and come in close contact with whatever germs live on them, there appears to be an MTA neglect at play.


If anyone knows whether the seats are being cleaned, feel free to say it. But they don't appear to be, and I guarantee that on many of those seats live a history of particles from feces, farts, pee, and you name it. If on average 300 persons who defecate on themselves sit on Metro bus and train seats per year, it means some power of that number of other people will have feces smeared onto their clothes per year. I know it sounds crude, but it's true; if the MTA don't sanitize their seats, that is what will happen. Is anyone really OK with sitting on shit? Apparently the MTA believes they are.

Monday, September 18, 2006

 

Is it On Purpose That Buses And Trains Don't Wait?

It ought to be mandatory that a bus or train that's about to take off, waits for arriving customers before doing so. For example if there's one train arriving on the upper section in a Metro station, it's quite absurd for a train in the lower section to leave without picking the arrivals up first. Don't know if this is a purposefully neglected point, like another area of imbecile incompetence, or if it's just a co-incidence.

Clearly, as pointed out earlier, the bus drivers often don't give a dime whether passengers are hurrying in from another bus or not. They just blatantly take off without them, which is one of those fundamental points that render MTA a lousy transit service. I bet not even black market cab drivers do that. Things that are so EASY to do something about, yet aren't. The subway is much better than the bus in terms of timeliness, consistency etc, but one can never be sure when it comes to the MTA, that they actually didn't ignore something very basic about their customer service. (That's right, ignore. It doesn't take 20 years to fix something that fundamental to good service unless you ignore it.(
Sometimes it's appeared on the subway as well, that one incoming train is ignored by another one taking off, or, the operator waits to take off just before the transferees have had time to reach the train. I just find that very rude to do against all kinds of people.

Anyway, with the subway, it may be that they've fixed that, but as far as the buses go, it seems to be a literal policy of the MTA to not wait for transferees. Of course someone will say if they did they would fall behind schedule. Sure, if they waited just an extra 10 seconds or so, before taking off, it would "significantly" alter their arrival times. But what schedule, anyway? Nobody in the city knows the bus schedule. Unless you collect a bunch of pamphlets or memorize 9 dozen calls to 1800-COMMUTE or jot down schedule times from www.mta.net, there's no way in the world that you're going to know the bus schedules, so what difference would it even make in that regard to be a bit more polite?
This blatant ignoring surely can be avoided. Better fix the fundamentals first, before you go on to flash fancy narcissus ads. To be polite, is Free.

Monday, September 11, 2006

 

More About The Subway Announcements

There is also this thing, that the more they utilize those signaling warning message, the more transit riders will grow accustomed to them, which may then undermine their efficiency once it really counts.

As it appears today, people are already growing numb to these announcements. Since virtually no-one is walking, standing or sitting near the edge of the platform, people aren't going to pay attention to a message that doesn't even pertain to them.
They might in fact get so used to it that when a real emergency occurs, they might automatically ignore the "ding doung dang dong".

It would be more common sense to apply a stripe of warning tape along a foot off the edges or so, to heed people away from them, visually. Because if they're going to start to announce all basic rules and precautions, it can quickly become a circus. There would be announcements like:

  • Attention All Passengers:

  • "Please do not sleep or walk on the train tracks".

  • "Please do not throw food at walls or ceilings".

  • "Please do not move SUV's down the escalators".

  • "Please do not eat your tickets".

  • "Please do not board the trains before they arrive".

  • "Please do not place your head in front of any moving trains"

  • "Please do not run, play or dance on top of the trains"

  • "Please do not walk nude near the edges of the platform"



Why not, see these are things people don't do anyway. So they'd make as much sense as the current announcements. People would just ignore them because they didn't relate to them. Moreover when there's really something to be announced, people will expect the same silly message to follow the signal, and subsequently may try to ignore it.

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