Why I Hate the MTA (Part 1)

New York has a wonderful mass transit system, one that ranks above most other cities (besides London and San Francisco, I'm told). We have an intricate network of subways that link the city together, a web of buses that grid the pavement, and boats. Boats are awesome, as we're an island-city. If we were more fancy and pompous, we'd be an archipelago like Hawaii and Japan.

That said, I can't stand the Metro Transit Authority of New York. The MTA is notorious for disrupting schedules, moving off the designated times, and placing buses at terrible intervals after dark. This is mostly a problem for Staten Island, as we get the short ends of all sticks, as we rely solely on buses.

"Oh, but Andrew, you're wrong. There's a train too."

That train is worth half a steaming pile of animal droppings. It does not travel along any vital locations of this island, only caters to residents on the Eastern coast, and has a schedule worth all the ducks in the Sarah desert. It only qualifies enough to be thought of because it's mostly free if you avoid the last stop (a residential township) and the first stop (the only direct way into Manhattan). This train is less useful than a mucus encrusted Kleenex.

The buses, on the other hand, are a whole other beast. It's important to note that I have semi-environmentalist tendencies. One such trait is that I will use mass transit in almost every situation when possible. This becomes impossible after 10 PM, as many buses will run hourly at this time or have no night hours at all. One such bus is the S62, which runs along Victory Blvd.

Last night a cluster of my friends and I went to a restaurant/diner (same one referenced in the Yankee's Suckfest) and finished up after midnight. This normally isn't an issue, but no one in this particular group drove. The bus I would've used to get home stopped running fifteen minutes prior, and the only bus in the area still in operation was the aforementioned S62. This bus had only passed three minutes prior, and the next scheduled run was in 57 minutes. One goddamn hour.

We collectively decided that it would be better to walk the length of Victory Blvd. rather than wait for the bus in the cold. For any readers not from this area of NYC, this is a very long street with many hills. Normally they don't seem so bad, but normally one is in a motorized vehicle. The six of us marched on, passing something like two hours' worth of scenery. As we neared our destination, the bus finally passed. One friend commented about it's worth, and I pointed out that we would have paid $2.25 after waiting an hour to save five minutes. The sense of triumph thickened for me.

At this point, I'm still recovering from the night. It's not that I'm unable to walk two miles in the cold, it's that I haven't in a long time. Had I expected it, or had it been earlier in the day, I would've been fine. When you're working on the fumes of zombiehood, however, two miles feels closer to five.

Maybe I'm bitter because this happened to me. Maybe I'm an instigator because the MTA deserves to get ripped into until they provide better service at a lower price (as they did five years ago). Maybe I'm just sad that something that should be so influential could turn out to be such a menace to the people that keep it alive. I'm too tired to make sense. I'm going to fucking bed. I'll post more of this when I'm conscious.