This city is so third world sometimes. If it’s not asbestos-caked steam pipes exploding in Midtown, shutting down a housemate’s office building for weeks, it’s a little rain putting almost the entire subway system out of service. The same housemate walked to the Morgan L stop this morning, saw it wasn’t working, then walked to the J, which was “packed like the L.” So he took a cab to Bedford to meet up with coworkers there, and they all took the L, which was working at that point, to Union Square. Since the 4 was also not running, they walked to Midtown.

My partner Luis didn’t get housemate Yury’s call this morning to warn him about the train, and ended up waiting in the humid heat for the shuttle. It took him an hour and a half to get to 22nd and 6th this morning. BushwickBK’s own Matt L, who works on the Upper West Side, took the intermittent J to Essex. Because the buses were crammed with people, and the taxi cartel was booked, he walked to 23rd and 8th, and then took the A — running local since the C and E were out — uptown. A three hour commute.

As for me, my printer might have gotten fried, and Cablevision’s phone system seems to be down right now, but it sure is nice to be in the a/c at home, not having to worry about snaking my way through a clogged, broken city. Good luck with that, suckers!

Any other Bushwickers got any good transit horror stories? Share them in the forum!

Before you say it, I know an express L train is unlikely to stop at Morgan. And that’s okay — it would just make things move more smoothly in general to have certain trains on the L line stop only every 3-4 stops, and another that stops local…

This is what I wrote a few weeks ago after I read about the petition to get an express F train going. When I went to do more research, though, I realized *smack forehead* the L is only two frickin’ tracks. Since I know how much time it takes and money it costs to dig another subway line, I just abandoned the post — am I really going to sit here and advocate spending $23.4 gazillion on a system that already runs in the red? I decided no.

But Raanan Geberer is not to be deterred by the daunting task of gathering up lots of someone else’s money and blowing it on drilling a whole new parallel subway line under the L — just for express trains! I’m happy to suffer through a generation of construction delays just from the psychic profit I’ll reap knowing that the Bushwickers of 2030 will have such an easy commute into Manhattan. As if.

What needs to happen is that our embarrassingly third world transit authority needs to welcome itself to the 1980s and let us all know when the next train is — OUTSIDE the stations, but at least inside before we pay. It needs to better coordinate the trains with new technology, especially on the L and other overcrowded lines so that they can run closer together. And I know the transit union hates the idea, but they need to automate the trains so they can lay people off and make the system pay for itself. That last item is a fantasy: the absence of any profit motive usually guarantees massive inefficiency and a black hole for cash.

So…can we get Donald Trump to build us a new L line? Weirder things have happened.

BMT Myrtle Line: Central Avenue, 1952 — from nycsubway.org

Once upon a time, Bushwick was part of Brooklyn. Bushwickers could get to our own downtown on a train without going through Manhattan or Williamsburg. And then in 1969, it was over, and they knocked the Myrtle elevated down, save for a bit of ghost trusses for a few hundred feet west of Broadway. Of course now that most traffic-generating buildings on western Myrtle have been bulldozed for projects or burned down, the bus shoots down the road and you’re downtown in 15 minutes. Problem solved!

I can’t tell if Robert Moses had anything to do with the destruction of this particular line, but let’s just blame him, ok? I’m sure the evidence is out there, I just don’t have to time to look it up. Actually, it’s easy to blame one man — and Moses was a whopper of a man, no doubt — but he was working in a time and within an administration that thought lightly of moving hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings around like pawns in a civilizational chess match. The 20th Century was a time of previously unsurpassed totalitarianism, mostly abroad, but the philosophy reared its head here in the States, too. And so the majority of New York’s transportation and housing problems stem from the damage the philosophy of top-down urban planning did to our city. That was substantial damage, and we are still recovering.

Anyway, enjoy the photo and think back to a time when there was an entire rail line just to take people from Bushwick and Ridgewood to the beach!

In the L-train Morgan Station. I stared at this for a few seconds in confusion before chuckling.

I’m on my way to the City last night at about 11, and as I enter the Bogart entrance for the L, I notice a cop around the corner, just out of view of the turnstiles. I saw him, and then turned back and asked what time that entrance closes. He said he didn’t know, but that they should just close it for good.

I said “No way, this is the one that should be open all the time, it’s the most-used.”

“It’s dangerous. I have scared at least 6 people so far just this hour. And I’m the good guy. What if I was the bad guy? Who would save you then?”

I went “uhhhh…no…body?”

Office McCreepy nodded. “That’s right, nobody.”

I kept a suspicious eye on him as I walked toward the stairs, and then shot down them when I reached them.

Is this the tactic the police department has employed to make us remember we need them? Where were they when some punk stole my trash can last week? I only live two blocks from the police station. Frankly, a cop hiding out of sight and then all but jumping out and yelling “boo!” at all who enter doesn’t illustrate to me the necessity of, say, increasing the police presence in the city, or possibly raising salaries. It illustrates to me that this city is so safe the cops have nothing better to do than wait around, eating shit and thinking of ways to freak people out. A cynical propaganda ploy. Very Bushian.

I think it’s time to lay off some cops.