Status: 17.12.2021 12:29 p.m.
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It has been taking New Yorkers from A to B for over 100 years: But the subway is getting more and more troubled by its age. Trains stop or derail. Now it is taking its toll that no investment has been made in the subway for a long time.
By Kai Clement, ARD radio studio New York
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It happened on September 10th on the G-Train in Brooklyn, around 10:30 at night, says passenger Katie Laura: “It was such a squeaky, metallic grinding – then the train stopped and leaned a little to the side.”
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The train derailed because concrete parts had come loose from the ceiling and lay on the tracks. Around 80 passengers had to walk through the tunnel to the next station. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured.
Paul Navarro was on site for the transport workers’ union: “Water damage to main water pipes, pile driving from construction sites – that takes its toll on a 100-year-old subway.”
On the move for more than 1000 kilometers: the New York subway.
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In use for 100 years
The New York subway opened on October 27, 1904, and was celebrated decades later by jazz legend Duke Ellington and in countless films. Today it is operated by the state-owned Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It serves more than 1000 kilometers of route in New York.
It is indispensable – but more bad than right, complains the passenger association, namely Nick Sufuentes. “People get annoyed about delays that they get stuck in tunnels for hours, and about dangerously overcrowded platforms. And what we keep hearing: a lack of information,” he says.
6383 underground wagons carry millions of passengers every day – on an average working day it is now around five and a half million, around three times the Hamburg population.
It’s new – and therefore a rarity among New York’s subway stations: 34th Street, Hudson Yards.
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“No repairs for years”
For the citizens’ movement “Citizens Budget Commission”, the New York subway is having a hard time with its past: “In its history in the 1970s and 80s, the MTA had hardly any funds. There they hardly invested. They had no other choice -Bahn station saw no repairs for years. Some of the renovations that happened last or are now in the capital plan are the first noteworthy since the stations were built, “said a spokesman for the citizens’ movement.
After all: violence and the worst dirt have disappeared from the subway. Everything else still needs a lot of patience. If investments are made as before – as the Commission has just calculated – it will be half a century before all 469 stations are in good condition.
Financial plan only approved after a long tussle
The subway is the backbone of the densely populated metropolis of New York. But there is a dispute between the city and the state over hundreds of millions of dollars over their financing. And the 2015 to 2019 capital plan has been in effect since the beginning of the year, but it was only just adopted after a long tussle.
MTA boss Thomas Prendergast can talk himself into a rage: “You cannot operate the system without money, not without a sensible repair program, not without expansion, if you can maintain your status as one of the number one cities in the world will. That’s how far my frustration is now. ”
MTA has just opened the first new subway station in more than 25 years, Hudson Yards Station. The difference to the everyday experience is blatant – the station is spacious, clean, shiny and air-conditioned. Otherwise: crumbling paintwork, broken tiles and rain showers sometimes underground. So this passenger says in frustration: “Has anything been done or cleaned here? Nothing like that.”
Neglect and delays, decay and failure – the New York rat plague can even make it into a moving subway train.
The Broken Giant – US Infrastructure Series
Bridges collapse, water pipes burst, deep potholes: In a series, the ARD studios in Washington, New York and Los Angeles report on the ailing infrastructure in the USA.
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