Resident’s elaborate pedestrian route defended as superior to the subway
Reporting brought to you by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Commuter Insists Crosstown Marathon Beats The Indignity Of Switching Trains
NEW YORK, NY — A New York resident has defended his decision to walk forty blocks across Manhattan rather than take a subway route requiring a single transfer, insisting that the lengthy pedestrian journey is actually faster, despite all evidence, and primarily superior because it avoids the unbearable indignity of switching trains.
“Walking is faster,” declared resident Greg Petrakis, 35, who routinely walks forty blocks to avoid a transfer that would take approximately eight minutes. “When you factor in the wait for the second train, the walk between platforms, the uncertainty, the crowding, walking is just faster. And more importantly, I do not have to transfer. The transfer is the worst part of any commute. The descent, the tunnel, the wait, the second train. I would rather walk forty blocks in any weather than endure a single transfer. And it is faster. Probably. I have never actually timed it. But it feels faster, which is what matters.”
The Transfer Aversion
According to the Institute for Commuter Psychology, Petrakis suffers from “transfer aversion,” a powerful dislike of switching trains that overrides rational calculation. “Mr. Petrakis would rather walk forty blocks than transfer once,” explained Dr. Eleanor Bishop. “This is not about speed, despite his claims. It is about the deep psychological aversion many commuters feel toward transfers. The transfer involves uncertainty, waiting, and a loss of momentum that commuters find disproportionately unpleasant. Mr. Petrakis has elevated this aversion into a principle, walking enormous distances to avoid the hated transfer, and rationalizing the walk as faster to justify a choice that is really about avoiding the psychological discomfort of switching trains.”
Petrakis has constructed an elaborate justification for his pedestrian commute. “People do not understand the true cost of a transfer,” he insisted. “It is not just the time. It is the soul-crushing experience of it. The crowded platform. The train that does not come. The squeeze through the tunnel. The standing, waiting, hoping. Walking forty blocks is honest, direct, under my control. I move at my own pace. I do not wait for anyone. I do not transfer. Yes, it takes a while. But it is faster, because the transfer wastes time in ways that do not show on a clock. The clock does not measure suffering. My route avoids the suffering. Therefore it is faster.”
The Disputed Speed
Experts noted that Petrakis’s walk was, by any objective measure, considerably slower than the transfer route. “The walk takes him about fifty minutes,” said Dr. Bishop. “The subway route, including the transfer, takes about twenty. So the walk is not faster. It is more than twice as slow. But Mr. Petrakis genuinely experiences it as faster, because the walk feels productive and under his control, while the transfer feels like wasted, helpless waiting. He has confused the quality of the time with its quantity. The walk is slower but feels better. He has interpreted feeling better as being faster, and now defends a fifty-minute walk as superior to a twenty-minute ride, on the grounds that the walk does not involve a transfer.”
Friends and coworkers have given up trying to convince Petrakis of the math. “We have shown him the times,” said coworker Diane Foster, 40. “The subway is faster. Objectively, measurably faster. And he nods, and agrees that the numbers say that, and then explains that the numbers do not capture the true experience, and that walking is really faster when you account for the misery of transferring. There is no arguing with him. He has decided that avoiding the transfer is worth forty blocks, and he has convinced himself this makes the walk faster. We have stopped trying. He walks. He is happy. He is also always a little late, but he insists he is faster, and who are we to measure a man’s suffering.”
The Broader Pattern
Experts noted that transfer aversion was widespread among New York commuters. “Many New Yorkers will go to absurd lengths to avoid a transfer,” said Dr. Bishop. “Walking long distances, taking slower direct routes, choosing apartments based on single-seat rides. The transfer carries a psychological cost far beyond the few minutes it takes. Mr. Petrakis is an extreme case, but the impulse is universal. The transfer represents loss of control, uncertainty, and the particular misery of waiting on a platform for a train that may never come. Avoiding it feels like a victory, even when, as in Mr. Petrakis’s case, the avoidance costs thirty extra minutes of walking. The aversion is irrational, and nearly everyone shares it.”
Petrakis remained entirely committed to his pedestrian route, undeterred by the objective evidence of its slowness. “Let them take the subway,” he said, setting off on his forty-block walk. “Let them transfer, and wait, and suffer. I will walk, directly, at my own pace, in control of my own journey, avoiding the transfer entirely. And I will get there faster, in the ways that matter, the ways the clock cannot measure. The transfer is a thief of the soul. My walk is freedom. And freedom, properly understood, is always faster than a transfer, no matter what the clock says.” He walked off into the distance, forty blocks ahead of him, slower and happier, faster in his heart if nowhere else, a man who had chosen the long way to avoid the short transfer he could not bear.
The Long Way
Petrakis continues to walk forty blocks daily to avoid a single subway transfer, insisting against all evidence that his route is faster, sustained by a transfer aversion he has elevated to a way of life. “Faster, freer, better,” he declared, completing his lengthy walk, late as usual but triumphant in spirit. “No transfer. No waiting. No suffering. Just me and the city, moving directly, in control. The subway commuters can have their transfers and their misery. I have my walk, my freedom, my superior, faster route.” The route was, by every measurable standard, slower, but Petrakis had long since stopped measuring it by standards that could be measured, walking his forty blocks each day in defiant avoidance of the eight-minute transfer he could not endure, faster only in the private accounting of a man who had decided that any distance was worth not switching trains. For genuine background, see the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and for further detail, the City of New York covers the real subject.
More nonsense at The Onion.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/