F***ed By the F Train on a Friday night

Image via Gothamist.comYou may have heard about the F train fiasco that occurred this past Friday night. Over 1,300 commuters were stuck underground for over an hour between the West 4th and Broadway/Lafayette stations. Friend of FIPS Michelle Paul gives us her first-hand experience of the shitstorm:

On Friday night I left work at 6:30 and got on the F train at 57th Street. I planned to exit at Bergen Street, go to Book Court, and then walk home enjoying the autumn evening. Instead I spent two hours underground enjoying the hospitality of the MTA.

A minute or two after the F left West 4th Street, we stopped. No one was particularly surprised. This was not out of the ordinary. I read my book. I eavesdropped on the conversations around me. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone creepy.

Eventually the voice of the conductor came on over the loudspeaker, with a surprisingly specific announcement: There was a broken rail on the track ahead of us, so we had to go back to West 4th. The train had not derailed, they were careful to say, but we couldn't continue on to Brooklyn this way. A ripple of exasperation spread through the car, coupled with preemptive exhaustion, as we all began to realize this would be a longer-than-usual commute.

A few minutes later, though, the message was a bit different. Apparently the broken rail was UNDER us -- as in, we'd already driven over it -- so instead of going anywhere, we'd need to wait to be RESCUED. By a RESCUE TRAIN. (I can't say the words RESCUE TRAIN in anything other than all-caps excitement.)

At least in the car I was in, this message was taken more with a sense of humor than any real annoyance. A broken rail?! Yes, please, good call, do not try to drive the train on a broken rail more than you already have. Yes, please, send the RESCUE TRAIN.

This was about the time when the standard NYC-commuter personal-space bubble of dead stares and silence started to break down, as people rolled their eyes and laughed and generally shared their amusement/frustration with each other. The guys next to me were trying to get to their friend's 21st birthday party; while we all waited for the RESCUE TRAIN, they started passing around the birthday card they'd made. Strangers wrote things like "Happy birthday, Chelsea! Don't ever ride the F train," and "May your year be better than the hour we're spending on the broken rail," and “Happy 21st, fuck the MTA. 

When the RESCUE TRAIN arrived, everyone calmly got up and walked back through each car on our original train to get to the RESCUE TRAIN, and then proceeded all the way to the end, crossing from car to car. People were holding the doors and waiting for one another! Guys, if it's this easy to be polite and civilized on the subway, can we maybe stop running each other over to board on any given Monday morning?

All this time, the conductors were carefully explaining (repeatedly) what was about to happen. Once everyone's boarded the RESCUE TRAIN, the RESCUE TRAIN is going to go backwards, back to West 4th Street. Backwards. Did we know the train was going to go backwards? Yes, we get it.

After a bit, the speakers came on and the conductor asked everyone at the “back” of the train to walk towards the “front”. The woman sitting across from me was like, "Wait -- do they mean the front that USED to be the front or the front that's the front NOW that we're going the other way?" The answer was... never really made clear to us.

The RESCUE TRAIN filled up with people. The whole super-crowded train car burst out laughing at the announcement that said “the train will be moving shortly, everyone please take a seat.”

We pulled back into West 4th Street and enjoyed the puzzled looks on the faces of everyone waiting on the platform. (Why were people waiting on the platform at all?! Didn't the MTA make any service announcements during the full hour we were stuck in the tunnel?!) Our whole train applauded as the doors opened and freed us from our cage. And then a bunch of us made a really dumb decision: we went upstairs and got on the next arriving C train instead of doing what any reasonable person would do and exiting the subway system entirely (and maybe burning it to the ground and salting the earth behind us?).

Of COURSE the C train (and, as I learned later, every other train) was experiencing delays, so we got to spend another 15 minutes sitting between West 4th and Spring. Where, finally, we came to our senses, went above ground, and, in a delightful display of NYC bonding, found groups of people who were going to the same neighborhood and shared cabs accordingly.

Any of you out there have a similar experience? Feel free to take the coments section to complain about it. Oh, and follow Michelle on Twitter!