Congestion

by Charles Coleman   

     "We are being held by the dispatcher due to congestion ahead," came the muddled announcement over the subway PA system in Spanish. Or was it English? I can't tell. Who can? The Spanish speakers are asking the English speakers what was said and the English speakers are asking the Spanish speakers. Congestion? Or did he say confusion?  No, it's congestion. 

     Everything with New York City's MTA is confused. Confusion wouldn't require a special announcement. Trains change their route and destination midstream. Think about an airline doing that. Imagine that you board a plane in New York under the impression that you're going to Dallas only to have the pilot announce over Tennessee that you're now en route to San Diego. Think that the passengers might get just a tad excited? There really isn't any reason to single confusion out. The standard way of doing things here is not to have any standard way. A train that's an express will pull into a station with an announcement that it's now a local. All of the express passengers will disembark and a torrent of local passengers will flood in. Then, since that switch went so effortlessly and one good turn deserves another, they'll do it again, but with the same train. They'll reverse the announcement and change the local back into an express. Now you see it, now you don't. Therefore, equipped with smiles of delight, all of the people who originally got off can now get back on.  And enthusiastically, all of the people that got on can now get back off.  Sort of like a dance, the MTA (move those asses?) shuffle. But this is only for beginners. At the advanced level an express train that remains an express train pulls into the Seventh Avenue 34th Street local tracks without any announcement. Again, move those asses, except this time you really have to move them. At 34th Street the local and express tracks are accessible to each other only by going down a stairway, crossing underneath the tracks and "resurfacing" on the other side. The conductor on the express train apparently isn't aware of the dearth of information that the passengers waiting for the express train have been suffering from. Possibly it's someone's idea of a good time watching people run like mad down a flight of stairs and up another only to have the doors close in their faces. But what's even better is to switch the next express back to the express track while the passengers are still on the local side of the stairway.  Keep those asses moving! After all, there are schedules to keep! Some misguided souls assume that the purpose of the subway is to transport people. Remember that axiom, when you assume, it makes an ass out of you and me and, in this instance, a moving ass. And to think, all of this fun only costs $2. Who said entertainment in New York is expensive?   

     But let's get congested again. Yes, congestion. Now we have congestion. It seems hard to imagine that the conductor really said congestion. The subway is backed up due to congestion. Is the Seventh Avenue train suffering from bronchitis? Possibly there's a little phlegm built up at 14th Street?
Maybe a little decongestant is in order. A canned announcement, read by someone who sounds as if he's hawking bingo numbers at a senior center, advises us that we have an unavoidable delay.  Unavoidable? I was under the delusion that  only New York City subway trains ran on these tracks.  I guess I'm wrong. Who else is here? Who snuck in? Did one of those annoying little Amtrak Acela Expresses snake its way in? They are just so self-impressed they think that they can go anywhere. Possibly one snuck onto the train's tracks and is now stopping at Christopher Street and 14th Street in addition to the scheduled stops of Baltimore and Philadelphia and gumming things up. That would make for an interesting passenger mix. The upper echelon of the business community meets the
upper echelon of the Greenwich Village gay community.

     Meanwhile another announcer, this time a woman, keeps telling us that we are at stops that we haven't arrived at yet. Or, at least, we haven't. Maybe she has and hasn't looked behind her to see where we are. Hopefully at some point she'll come back to get us. 

     Finally, as we sit here, we are further advised to report any suspicious packages or activity. Do they really think that an unattended package would stand much of a chance of not getting glommed by someone? Suspicious activity. In New York City? What's suspicious activity here? Actually, the train
arriving in a station without delay would be suspicious! If that ever happens, we can report that.   

Charles Coleman is a writer of short stories and essays and a native New Yorker. As such, he has always been under the impression that the purpose of a driver's license is to enable one to buy ice cold beer after a long, unairconditioned subway ride home in the doldrums of August.  Unlike most writers, he is not currently working on a novel.  However, who knows, he may write one during the next congestion delay.