Sick passengers on the NYC subway

The BBQ Pit
41

Youknow, it’s not that I don’t have sympathy for anyone who truly gets sick on a subway train, but the MTA policy of holdong up the train is senseless and really sucks.

I mean, it’s probably a a maximum of 15 feet to the nearest door on the train and I doubt most illnesses are so severe as to prevent someone from walking or being transported with the assistance of other passengers onto the platform. And of all the maladies that could possibly affect train passengers I doubbt than ANY of them involve possible spinal cord injuries, so the “don’t touch or move them” policy is really silly.

And once the person is on the platform, there is NO REASON to delay the train. Train stations have personnel, too.

Despite a prevailing reputation to the contrary, NYCer’s are very aware of what is going on around them and very quick to attempt to assist anyone that might need help. I can think of many occasions when I was faint or nauseous ( not uncommon at all considering the smell of many train stations) and went to lean against a wall or something only to have someone immediately ask me if needed help…of course, when I say no they back off, though.

Once, some fellow passengers and I amused ourselves during the delay by making get well cards for the sick passenger.

42

** plays the appropriate Ellington piece in commiseration with PRR **

43

I am impaled on a spear in Inwood and I work in the World Financial Center. My own cats are just waiting until I die so they can eat me.

44

Clearly, whatever policy they have in place is not working, because both the sick passenger and the well passengers are being delayed.

It’s situations like these I can’t help but wonder, “what would Disneyland do?” My mom’s an RN at Disneyland, and from the way she describes it, they run that place like precision clockwork. If something doesn’t work, it gets pitched out and replaced with something that did. They have to. There’s a hundred thousand people in there most days, and a small hiccup means that a significant percentage of them can have their holiday spoiled.

You can bet that if someone were to fall ill on Space Mountain or the Indiana Jones Adventure, that the people in charge ensure a) the sick person is taken care of and b) the other guests are not inconvenienced. Most times, the other passengers don’t even have a clue that something has happened.

Sounds like New York mass transit could take a lesson from them.

45

Is your mom allowed to talk in character?

I am not altogether convinced that the Disney model is really the way to go here.

46

I am about 2 stops south of you on the A line and I also work in the financial district! We may very well see each other every day and not even know it. I’ll keep my eye out for people impaled with spears on the subway from now on! :slight_smile:

47

That is kind of crazy, actually. Though I keep my spear to myself on the subway, as I would not want anyone to accidentally get sick. Other than being dangerously handsome and well dressed, I keep a low profile.

48

AGAIN!!!

Yesterday. “A” train again. Half-hour delay (in a station). THEN, the announcement finally comes. We all switch to the local, having missed about six local trains in that initial half-hour… Gahhhh!!!

I’ve been trying to look into the MTA’s reasoning here. Googling “NYC subway MTA sick passenger” yields a lot of complaints, anecdotes, but nothing resembling an official explanation of this idiotic policy.

It’s insulting, is what it is. The pinheads who run this municipality --and every other one, for that matter-- are yammering 24/7 about “using public transit instead of selfishly using our cars” etc.–when the answer is plainly: “Make the fucking subways useable, you assholes, and we’ll use them more.”

One blogger (lost the link, sorry) pointed out that all they need to do is phone ahead to the next station, where there is (nearly) always a transit clerk (who no longer sells tokens so who the fuck knows what, beyond onanism, he or she does in that little booth all day) and tell him or her to haul his/her ass out of the token booth and get downstairs where in precisely 1 minute we will be barreling in and unloading a sick passenger into your lap. EMTs can come in due time and until that point the token booth (horrors!) can go unmanned.

Comibined with my idea of running express to a subway station with available personnel, this will not cost the subway system more than 12 seconds of delay, if that.

Another blogger (sorry, my laptop crashed on me with all these links un-saved) suggested that many of these sick passengers were actually just drunks, citing increased “sick passenger” events on Monday morning from too much weekend partying. With these drunken pinheads, I wouldn’t even waste an ambulance trip–just dump them straight into the train tunnels for the rats to feed on!

Also, unrelated, but I was thinking yesterday (before this incident): why are there not more benches on subway platforms? Two hundred people waiting ten minutes for a train, with 12 bench seats available. At the Broadway Nassau stop, if I’m going to waiting for a train, what exactly is keeping the MTA from giving me a place to sit while I wait? Is the concept of benches too high tech for them or something?

49

I’ve always wondered why they don’t do this. It’s not exactly rocket science. Get the sick person *off * the train, get the train moving. I mean, for the record, if I’m that sick, the last place on earth I want to be is on the fucking train, so what’s the problem?

We don’t actually seem to get that many “sick passenger” delays in Boston. Or maybe we do. As far as I can tell, MBTA employees amuse themselves my making up stupid reasons why trains are delayed, so who knows.

50

Bad day for me yesterday, too.

I had the “If I was a good crackhead, then I can be a good Christian” preacher TWICE yesterday, on both commutes. The end times are definitely coming.