MTA claims installing decorative lights on platforms will distract riders from fact that their commute is being extended indefinitely
New York City
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced a major improvement to the subway system: they will install decorative LED lights on platforms throughout the city, which will distract riders from the fact that their trains are delayed indefinitely through the sheer force of artistic presentation.
“Commuters will no longer notice that they’re waiting an hour for a train when they’re distracted by beautiful lighting,” an MTA spokesperson explained during a press conference that ran forty minutes late because everyone took the subway to get there. “We’re not fixing the trains. We’re making waiting for the trains more aesthetically pleasing.”
The lights cost approximately $50 million and will illuminate platforms while trains break down behind them in the darkness. One rider, stranded on a platform for ninety minutes, said: “The lights are nice, but I’m forty-five minutes late to work. Can the lights also make my boss not angry?”
The MTA has decided that rather than addressing the fundamental infrastructure failures, aging signaling systems, and chronic underfunding that make the subway dysfunctional, they will instead install beautiful lights so that the experience of waiting indefinitely becomes more Instagram-friendly.
A transportation expert calculated that $50 million could have been used to actually repair infrastructure, but acknowledged that “beautiful chaos is harder to fix than plain chaos, so the MTA decided to embrace it.”
Satire about transit at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
SOURCE: bohiney.com