Blogger To Outraged Prospect Park/15th St F/G Train Riders: STFU

Ok, so perhaps Benjamin Kabak from 2nd Ave Sagas didn't say that *exactly,* however his recent post A Tale of A Viaduct, A Sign And The Need To Pay Attention sends a pretty clear message, and that message seems to be:

• stop your bitching
• get a clue
• you're stupid if you didn't know this work was going to be happening

And by "this work," of course, I mean the news that the Prospect Park -15th St F/G station will not be offering any Manhattan bound subway service until May, beginning next Monday, January 10th. Like AT ALL.

Apparently all y'all should have been attending Community Board meetings, deciphering cryptic messages on the MTA site and doing way the hell more research than you've been doing because, DUH EVERYONE KNEW THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN! TRANSLATION: WE'RE ALL SO STOOPID.

This day of outrage in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace highlights how people simply take the transit system for granted. They’d rather every station but theirs get rehabbed and are content to let infrastructure age if it means they aren’t inconvenienced. The millions of New Yorkers who ride the subway every day are also content to ignore the news that impacts their lifeline to the economic hubs of the city, and the media that covers these areas is content to do a half-hearted job of it.

Ok, look: while I certainly think it's great to stay on top of wtf is going on in your neighborhood, this one was a leetle bit hard to follow. As several commenters have already pointed out, there might be information floating around out there, but it seems pretty friggin hard to find. One Second Avenue Saga commenter notes:

The sign I saw directs readers to “visit MTA.info” for more details. I challenge you to find this info on the website! There is no mention on the homepage. The most promising link – “planned service changes” – brings you to this page (http://travel.mtanyct.info/serviceadvisory/), which likewise has nothing. Only by searching for F-line alerts after 1/10 do you retrieve information. (The full Culver info page is accessed via the MTA Agency Links menu on the homepage, then NYC Transit, then the little blue “service notices” box in the corner – how intuitive!) For the web-savvy, this information is not so difficult to get, but think of all the many non-savvy riders: the elderly, non-English speakers, people without home internet connections. The MTA has a responsibility to inform those people as well!

As for the argument that the information is out there, so we should all just know it, that's also pretty ridic to me. Daylight savings happens every year...it's on our calendars, so why even bothering mentioning it? Meanwhile its on every news cast, in every newspaper, on every radio show. Why? Because people get busy, and forget, and have their own damn lives to pay attention to. And in the case of the MTA these lives require them to ride their asses on the subway every fucking day, so sorry: they're not expecting it to just stop showing up at their goddamned station for four months.

In fairness, SAS *does* give the MTA a slight slap on the wrist for the short notice:

the MTA isn’t absolved of all blame either. At a Community Board 6 Transportation Committee meeting earlier this fall, committee members specifically asked the MTA to warn the neighborhoods well ahead of time. Instead, the MTA started hanging up signs portending a four-month service outage just seven days ahead of time.

As far as I'm concernced, maybe we should all take a step back and look at the bigger picture: perhaps there wouldn't need to be constant service changes and maintenance disruptions like this IF SOMEONE WAS TAKING CARE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING SUBWAY SYSTEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!? Cause if these maintenance and upgrade issues are handled like everything else by the MTA, all you F/G ridin btchz can say goodbye to your station 4evs.