In 2025 I Will Become a Transit Freak

We’re about 3 weeks into the new year which my team of research scientists tells me is the time people tend to start crapping out on their New Year’s resolutions. I am in fact a New Year’s Resolutions Guy because I try to keep my fruit low hanging and my resolutions attainable. This started about 10 years ago when I wanted to “read more”. I translated this vague notion into a resolution to simply just keep track of what I read for the year. Then the yearly resolution became “read as many books or more as the year prior”, which has not resulted in a straight line of progression, but the commitment has kept the idea of reading on a low hum in the background of my mind. I think I’ve definitely read more over the last decade than I would have if I didn’t have this framework.

Composing effective resolutions has been a matter of trial and error. I’ve resolved to do things that are realistic but require some planning, commitment, and discipline, like getting a passport or running a half marathon, but I’ve also aimed for things that are too vague and dreamy like 2024’s thoroughly unfulfilled “be lighter of heart and spirit”. A noble intent, but frankly is the kind of bullshit you write down as a summer child basking in the naive glow of December 2023¹ .

This year, however, I have a vague goal that I am endeavoring to break down into specifics: learn as much as I can about the New York City transit system.

The subway (and its alluringly misunderstood cousin, the bus) has captured my interest and imagination for most of the time I’ve lived in New York. I grew up in car-dominated suburbia, so my exposure to mass transit on a meaningful scale was limited to my brief stint in Chicago before I moved to NYC, so navigating mass transit was one of the bigger adjustments, albeit one I took to joyfully. I thought it was pretty novel that I could get just about anywhere on a train, even if it was sometimes a lengthy trip and a pain in the ass. I had spent the previous 22 years dealing with car traffic, getting from one place to the other has its hang ups one way or the other.

My second summer in the city was the infamous MTA “Summer of Hell” - a stretch of time where straphangers such as myself were dealing with breakdowns, extensive delays, and a few derailments on the choo choo. As I traded off being screwed by the A train and the 1 train that summer, I found myself thinking “what’s the deal with all this shit?” and there was some solid reporting in the Times about the state of the MTA that piqued my interest in learning more about the aforementioned shit. Taking this level of attention got me into the zone I think I currently occupy, which is knowing a decent amount about transit. But, as I’ve indicated, I am interested in transcending that level of knowledge and moving into “subway maniac” territory. Should probably not throw around the term “subway maniac” going forward.

I have intertwined feelings of deep pride and flustered indignation about the Metropolitan Transit Authority. On the one hand, our subway system is one of the best and most extensive in the world, taking you to disparate corners of the city and making it possible to live without a car, but on the other it is cartoonishly and criminally decrepit and underfunded. I consider it a miracle that it runs at all. A billion people ride these trains every year and the signals were installed during the Roosevelt Administration. How can you not find that fascinating?

So now I am left with working out how to take this noble aim and break it down into actionable steps. I suppose the best place to start is the New York Transit Museum, though I am also keeping my ear to the ground for shady, unsanctioned urban exploration tours that go into decommissioned subway stations. I do not know where to find those (Dark web? Fort Greene Farmer’s Market?) so if you have a lead let me know. Watch this space to see me form hard-lined opinions on the functional aesthetics of R32A cars vs R44 cars - I am also working on a resolution to make this newsletter/blog more alienating and inaccessible in 2025.

¹ I actually took a minute to probe this and I think that I actually was lighter of heart and spirit, but primarily in the way I thought about / related to myself, friends, family, my interests, hobbies, etc. And sur-frigging-prise, the things that make me feel like this resolution was a bust all related to work, and, you know, the rest of the world and everything going on? You know, things largely outside of my control?