This is the condition in which this tunnel of the 191 Street station is often found. These are images recorded by a neighbor who crosses here frequently.
“Now it is clean, on Mondays you come here and are amazed at so many cartons and glasses and bottles that people throw away,” said one user.
This tunnel on Broadway and 191st Street gives access to line 1 of the subway, and users report that they have to navigate through garbage and puddles of water to reach the platform.
“The tunnel is kind of abandoned. You have to remove all that smudges that it has and a little more cleaning,” added another user.
This is what it looked like in 2015, when artists embellished these walls with a beautiful piece of art. Now they have been covered with graffiti and have cracks that leak water, mold and grime.
“Yes, they must be serviced because it has a lot of cracks,” said another user.
“I always pass by here and I see that and I say why they will not come to clean the thing well,” added another user.
Since its opening in March 1913, this tunnel has been the only connection from Broadway to the train station and is also used by residents to cross to the other side of St. Nicholas Avenue.
And if the poor condition of the tunnel was not enough, bicycles and scooters pass through here at high speed.
“That’s very bad, because this is for pedestrians, do you understand? So this here can hit anyone,” said another user.
Other passengers explain that it serves as a refuge for homeless people.
“Here there are people who sleep in the tunnel and they have taken this as a hotel, here then all the waste and all the garbage is thrown here,” added the first of the users interviewed.
-They tell me that they even take drugs here?
“I’ve seen everything here, even syringes.”
“There is even one that whenever he sees me he tells me ‘I am Hungry and I am Hungry give me money’, and then I give him a peso or two pesos, whatever he has,” added the third user.
Upper Manhattan Community Board 12 says it has received many complaints about this problem but the agency in charge of maintenance is the city’s Department of Transportation.
“That tunnel has unfortunately become the community garbage dump and due attention is not being paid to them,” said Eliezer Bueno / President of the Community Board 12.
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