A speed run of the entire system raises suspicions that the trains can go faster when someone is counting
Fastest Trip Through Every Subway Station Leaves New Yorkers Demanding the Same Train
NEW YORK – While most riders measure success by reaching one destination before their boss notices, a small community of enthusiasts sets out to pass through every station in the system in a single continuous journey. Public radio’s transportation coverage has followed them, with headlines on a new record set for the fastest trip through the entirety of the subway and a day in the life of a rider attempting it across all 472 stations. Ordinary commuters have studied the result with the cold attention of people who waited twenty minutes for a C train that morning.
“He did the whole system in under a day,” said Yolanda Pettigrew, a home health aide who rides from East New York to the Upper West Side. “All of it. Four hundred seventy-two stops. It takes me an hour and forty to do nineteen. So either he is very good at this or the trains know when it matters. I think they knew. I think somebody made a call.”
The Conspiracy Takes Shape
The Broadway Junction Tribunal on Unequal Service, a group of riders who met during a signal failure and never disbanded, has opened an inquiry. Its preliminary report lists the conditions members believe the record-setter enjoyed:
- Trains that arrived
- Transfers that connected instead of pulling out as he reached the door
- No “sick passenger,” no “police activity,” no “train traffic ahead”
- Not one conductor saying “this train is now running express” after he boarded
- A functioning G train, which the Tribunal calls “implausible on its face”
Tribunal chair Hyman Rothbard said the group does not allege wrongdoing. “We allege luck,” he said. “An amount of luck that, if it happened to me, I would retire.”
The Technique
Those who attempt the challenge say it is mostly planning. Routes are mapped for months. Competitors memorize which car stops nearest the stairs at each transfer, sprint between platforms and eat while standing. They do not leave the system. They do not, by all accounts, sit. “It is not fun,” one veteran of the attempt told the Tribunal. “People think you are seeing New York. You are seeing tile. You see a great deal of tile.”
The agency has its own numbers to be pleased about. Local coverage notes that the subway is speeding up across the city and recorded its best on-time performance in years, which officials credit to targeted spending. Rothbard received the news politely. “On-time according to who,” he said. “The schedule says the train comes every eight minutes. If it comes after eleven, that is on time for the train. It is not on time for me.”
Ordinary Riders Set Their Own Records
Inspired, commuters have begun logging personal bests in categories closer to daily life. The Tribunal maintains a leaderboard:
- Longest wait for a train displayed as “2 min”: 26 minutes, Hoyt-Schermerhorn
- Most consecutive days without a seat: 211, a woman on the 4
- Fastest transfer at Times Square carrying a child and a cake: 3 minutes 40
- Most stations passed while asleep: 31, a nurse who woke in Far Rockaway
A survey of 650 riders found that 88 percent could not name more than sixty stations, 73 percent have never been to the end of their own line, and 12 percent believe there is a stop called “Next.”
The Record-Setter’s Reputation
Within the Tribunal, feelings about the champion are complicated. Some admire the dedication. Others resent the implication that the system works. “Do not tell people it can be done,” Pettigrew said. “Now when I am late, they will say a man did all 472 in a day and you could not do nineteen. He has made it harder for the rest of us.”
What It Says About the Map
Transit historians note that the challenge is only possible because the network is so vast, a tangle of three former companies stitched into one. There are stations four blocks apart and stations nobody has voluntarily visited since the Dodgers left. To pass through all of them is to tour a century of decisions, some of them good.
A Modest Proposal
The Tribunal has asked that the conditions of the record run be made permanent for one line, any line, as a pilot. It suggests the agency simply tell every train each morning that someone is timing it. Rothbard believes this would cost nothing. “They perform for an audience,” he said. “So give them an audience. Put a man with a stopwatch on every platform. I will volunteer. I am already there.”
London’s Tube Challenge Tips Its Cap
The feat has a long-established counterpart in the United Kingdom, where enthusiasts race through all 272 Underground stations and are similarly resented. The London Prat’s London satirical news record attempts page profiled a man who did it in a day and then could not get home because of a signal failure at Earl’s Court. Its English satirical news for trainspotters called the New York version “the same thing with more stations and more opinions.”
Pettigrew’s train on Friday was held at Franklin Avenue for nine minutes because of a train ahead of it, which was itself held because of a train ahead of that. She arrived at work at 9:17. Nobody timed it. Bohiney Magazine rode one stop for this story and got off at the wrong one.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/