YOU don’t have to like New York City-style public transportation, but the vast majority of us have to take it. And take it we do — right in the caboose. Now, as the nation faces its ugliest economy since the horse-and-buggy era, the MTA raises rates a whopping 25 percent. Since dumping tea in the harbor isn’t an option, it’s time to hand the occupying maroon-coats a straphangers’ bill of rights.
MORE: See the Full List of Fare Hikes and Service Cuts
1. OPEN-DOOR POLICY: MTA operators are apparently the only people in New York who don’t understand that if a local and express train are stopped on opposite sides of the platform, opening the damn doors helps people make the switch. Open up!
2. SENSITIVITY TRAIN-ING: Considering they’re usually out of maps, can’t give change, have no idea where any of the trains go and are often asleep, the booth attendants have to start being nice to us. Considering their work ethic and people skills, these folks are lucky they’re not making minimum wage and asking us, “Would you like fries with that?”
3. SNAP, CRACKLE, POP: Employees aren’t the only things in the MTA that never work. The speaker system pales in comparison to two cans connected by a string. If there’s a change in service — and at night and on weekends there always is — the people in the booths should put down their cheese fries and come down to tell passengers why there’s a downtown A flying down the uptown 1 track.
4. CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC: New Yorkers like music. But what we don’t need is a mariachi band or doo-wop act singing “A Change Is Gonna Come” while hanging over us rattling a change cup for percussion as their big sombreros and upright basses poke out people’s eyes. Let’s keep bands on the platforms and iPods in the train cars.
5. ASSENGERS: Any kind of law enforcement at all would be appreciated. If a rider is taking up two seats, asleep in urine-soaked pants, hogging a pole like a greedy stripper, or hopping turnstiles like they’re playground apparatus, it’s ticket time. And if your big gym bag can’t fit below your seat — it, too, needs to pay $2.50.
6. COURTESY CALL: No cellphones on buses or elevated trains. The entire ride from Manhattan to either airport comes complete with a soundtrack of idiots yelling about whose ass almost got kicked, whose ass is lucky it didn’t get kicked and whose ass is going to get kicked next time. We get it, tough guy — your credit rating is so good, you can get a cellphone. Now shuddup. (And this all goes double for buses.)
7. DRAWING THE LINE: Mark on the platform not only where the train will stop, but where the doors will open, so passengers know where to wait. It’s not right that the first people on the platform can end up standing for their entire ride because they lost the door lottery. And the C or G trains? Passengers can spend 20 minutes waiting in a humid station and still miss those shorties when they stop 30 feet before or after the middle of the platform.
8. THE P TRAIN: It’s never a good idea to remove one’s pants in a subway, but sometimes ya simply gotta go. Cleaning up the bathrooms that already exist at stations might keep the platforms a little less smelly. And hey, since attendants are no longer surly (see No. 2), they could be keepers of the keys.
9. GERM WARFARE: The subway delivers 5 million rides every weekday and along with that we’re figuring an untold number of colds, flus and general ickiness. How about installing Purell dispensers in cars they way they do in hospitals? Seriously, which do you think has more germs, Lenox Hill or the E train?
10. BUNGALOW 8 TRAIN: If you want to encourage big spenders, you need a VIP car. Put a velvet rope at the front of each platform, and make that an oasis for passengers who buy a monthly platinum card, for which the MTA could charge extra. That car’s doors open 10 seconds before the others, to give first-class customers a head start toward the staircase, so they’ll barely see the unwashed masses at all.