I think that taking the subway is one of the best things for an out-of-towner to do in NYC. We even took it to a Yankee's game in the middle of the summer. My husband still hasn't forgiven me!

Repete

Please feel free to take a taxi, but not when I neend one.

By the way eating and drinking is banned in the subway. And while I find the morning coffee drinkers insufferable self-absorbed bores, issuing summons or other draconian tecnhqiues are not in keeping with the NY character. It would be like issuing tickets for jaywalking which is a venerated NY sport.

If you want clean, plan your next holiday around an operating room. If you want to see how 17 million try to c0-exist come to NY.

If you want a place where every law is enforced, try Singapore. If you want a vibrant, ecclectic, self-policed, creative atmosphere, try NY.

Number of subway stations in Athens: 45
Number of NYC subway stations: 468

Athens yearly ridership: 370 million
NYC yearly ridership: 1.6 Billion

And one line of the Athens metro was built as a steam train in 1869. The other 3 lines were built in 1991.
Enough. Yes, the NYC subway is dirty. Congratulations. You noticed the obvious.

Naw, what I noticed is just another example of NY boosters getting overly defensive when there's any criticism of one of their institutions. But I guess that should have been obvious from these boards as well. My bad.

I enjoy NYC often for business and pleasure, and, as I noted earlier, love the subway there.

But the simple argument that because it's big and convenient, it's automatically OK to be dirty doesn't wash.

MP: OK, I offered Athens to counter the age argument. That 1869 line, BTW, still works fine. I used it every day for a month a few years back. For size, then, how about Beijing, where I've spent 7 weeks over the past two years? It's now up to 5 million riders per day and much cleaner.

I guess I don't think that even low-level enforcement of laws against subway slobs is "draconian."

Dirty or clean, I'll use the subway because it's a fantastic system. No one's saying NYC isn't one of the world's greatest cities, but the thin skin toward any criticism seems a tad picayunish.

NYC has a limitd police force - only about 35,000 - and they're busy dealing with crime (not to mention terrorism, more than a hundred heads of state turning up at the UN periodically and many public events with more than a million attendees) - not people who are nuisances with their coffee. It's the safest large city in the country. We never claimed to be the tidiest.

If clean is all that matters I reco Switzerland, where the whole country shuts down at about 9 pm.

repete: Actually, what seemed really "picayunish" is criticizing the cleanliness of a transportation system that works as well as the MTA does, even with the overwhelmingly daunting budgetary and logistical challenges that NYC presents.

I would also ask exactly when was the last time you were actualy ON the NYC subway - because other than the tunnel walls in the stations, the NYC subway cars themselves are remarkably clean most days, on most lines. Of course, I only travel on subway 6 days a week, so I have a limited actual experience.

You asked adu to name a dirtier subway system - and I would say yes, Rome's subway is pretty funky. But it still works pretty well and the challenges that the Rome subway presents are quite understandable.

there are some live attendants at the stations, but theynwere not very helpful. the maps are easy to follow and we had no issues just jumping on the trains. We did purchase day passes, so t was quick and easy.
As for saftey and cleanliness, both were fine in my opinion. A few discarded newspapers were as messy as our trains got.

If someone critiizes NY and Ny'ers agree, they will state it. No one knows the shortcomings of the city better than us. But the subways are the economic and transportation life line of NY and transcends being just a subway. It is a symbol of a hard working city.

As many have pointed out, we take it to high school, college, work, and most of us go to the Mets, Giants, Knicks, and Ranger games by subway the theatre and Lincoln Center. One night after a NY Philharmonic concert I saw the principal clarinetist on the subway. He recently stopped performing with them after 60 years.

To say the subway isn't clean is a superficial and obvious criticism which shows you no matter times you visit NY, you do not know NY.

we used the subway for the first time to go back and forth to the Staten Island Ferry. We went in the wrong place once, but other than that was easy and people were helpful. We even retrieved a lost jacket quickly. I didn' notice that it was particularly dirty. We did not travel at rush hour, which may have been more difficult

Stanley Drucker played clarinet for the MTA, too?

Stanley Drucker played clarinet for the MTA, too?

He was palying under one of those official banners, so I threw him some coin.

Just as Stanley Drucker knew his Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, et al, he knew that the best way to get from Lincoln Center to Penn Station was the #1 train. BTW - the art mosaics in the 66 St. station are by a world class artist.

<deadpan> And the best way to get to Carnegie Hall? </deadpan>

bspielman, do I have to answer that? (I'm repeating it over and over in my head now -- gee, thanks )

And for those of you who don't know the joke, the answer to b's question is:

"Practice, practice, practice"

Funny, I thought it was the N, Q, R or W! (The latter, apparently, not for much longer.)

sf7307, I'm sure, knows that the comedic reply is attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to the late concert violinist, Jascha Heifetz, said to have been accosted on the street and asked for directions to New York's most famous concert hall.