Century-old steel is blamed for slowing trains while quietly doing the only job it was ever given
Rusty Subway Columns Accused of Delaying Trains They Have Supported Since Theodore Roosevelt
NEW YORK – The steel columns that line the oldest stretches of the subway were riveted into place when the fare was a nickel and the motorman wore a tie. They are now, according to a headline in a community board’s news roundup, a problem: “Like cancer”: the MTA’s trains are held up by rusty columns from the early 1900s. Engineers say corrosion in the old supports forces slow zones and expensive repairs. The columns, reached for comment at a station on the Upper West Side, stood there.
“I want to be fair to both sides,” said Ignatius Brennan, founder of the Lenox Avenue Society for the Appreciation of Load-Bearing Elements, resting a hand on a column painted its fortieth coat of green. “Yes, they are rusty. They are a hundred and twenty years old and they live in a hole that leaks. You would be rusty. But I would point out that the phrase is ‘trains held up by columns,’ and that is true in two senses, and only one of them is a complaint.”
A Record of Service
The Society has compiled what it calls the columns’ employment history:
- Installed: before the invention of sliced bread, the zipper and the tabloid
- Days off: none
- Coats of paint: one per decade, applied over the previous coat, the rust and occasionally a flyer
- Things leaned on them: roughly four billion commuters
- Things taped to them: every lost cat since 1904
- Thanks received: this article
“Show me another city employee with that attendance,” Brennan said. “They have never called in sick. They have never asked for overtime. They were told to hold up Broadway and they are holding up Broadway.”
The Engineering View
Structural specialists are less sentimental. Water has been seeping through the street into the tunnels since the day they opened, carrying road salt each winter. Steel that sits in salt water for a century loses thickness. When an inspection finds a column too far gone, trains above or beside it must crawl until it is reinforced, which is why a rider can sit between stations for no visible reason while a man with a flashlight looks at a beam.
The trouble is paying for it. The system’s finances are their own kind of corrosion. Public radio has reported that the transit agency owes 48 billion dollars and will pay more than 3 billion to lenders this year, money that cannot go into steel. Brennan sees a parallel. “The debt is also from long ago, also growing quietly in the dark, also holding everything up until one day it does not,” he said. “At least you can paint a column.”
Riders Take Sides
A survey of 550 commuters by the Society found that 66 percent had never noticed the columns, 21 percent had walked into one while looking at a phone, and 13 percent had “a favorite.” Asked whether the old steel should be replaced, 58 percent said yes, 30 percent said “with what money,” and 12 percent asked whether replacing it would mean weekend service changes, and on hearing the answer withdrew their support.
One rider at 103rd Street said she feels for them. “I am also from the early part of the last century, more or less, and people are also saying I slow things down,” said Miriam Adelstein, 84. “Nobody offers me a coat of paint.”
The Paint
The paint deserves its own mention. Decades of layers have given some columns a diameter visibly larger than the steel inside. A chip knocked loose near 86th Street was examined by the Society and found to contain eleven distinct colors, a fragment of a 1970s advertisement and what members believe is gum from the Lindsay administration. Brennan has had it framed.
What Replacement Would Involve
Swapping out a column is not simple. The street above must be supported, the track taken out of service, and the work done overnight in a tunnel where trains still run on the next track. Each one costs more than a house. There are thousands. Engineers say the system cannot be rebuilt all at once and must be patched in order of urgency, a philosophy New Yorkers recognize from their own apartments.
A Century From Now
The agency’s current investments in new signals and cars are intended to last decades. Brennan wonders what will be said of them in 2126. “Somebody will write that the trains are being held up by signals from the early 2000s,” he said. “And some old fellow will stand in a station and say, be fair, they did their best.”
London’s Victorians Send Regards
The story resonated in the United Kingdom, where the Underground runs through tunnels dug by men in top hats. The London Prat’s UK satirical news on crumbling infrastructure reported that part of the Northern line is held together by “a brick, a bolt and the reputation of Queen Victoria.” Its British satirical news heritage column proposed listing the New York columns as monuments so that nobody could afford to touch them.
A downtown local slowed through 96th Street on Friday at walking pace, its passengers looking out at the green pillars sliding by. One of the columns had a new flyer on it, for a lost cat. Bohiney Magazine leaned on it while writing this. It held.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/