GABRIELA YARELIZ

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Dear Eric Adams (Mayor):

Public things require courteous and considerate users. Absent that, they are destroyed. Public libraries (which we should talk about because funding is being cut, and they barely function pre-cut), public pools, public parks— but let’s talk about public transport. Public transport is the pool everyone is peeing in.

People are out of control. You will be walking up the stairs to get to another platform and someone passes gas in your face, and you have no where to turn while choking. There is the eternal problem of dancers on crowded trains using grip polls as strip polls, and a patron almost getting kicked in the face. Also, no one needs to touch a poll that was between someone’s butt cheeks. Certain turnstiles steal your money and don’t let you in. Certain stations steal your money because a train never even comes, violating the whole function and promise of public transport. Then, there are the people who don’t even pay and jump the ‘stile. No. It’s basic, you pay for service rendered. A bus shouldn’t have to announce “Fare Required.” Either you pay or you don’t get on. If the average person can afford drugs or coffee, they can afford bus/train fare.

There is the man at the station who thinks the perfect time to bring his skeleton doll out to dance is when trains arrive and the whole area is swarming with people like an ant pile that has just been stepped into. Like, dude, dance when there aren’t millions of people trying to get to their next train before it disappears in the tunnel, not to be seen again for the next half hour because of delays.

There is the unhoused person that people fear, so everyone is crowded on top of each other at one tiny end of the train to avoid his swirling pee. Then, the sleeper who decides they should sprawl out on a whole section of seats because God knows what they were doing last night. God forbid you say something and get stabbed.

There are the people who start getting on the train without letting people off. Canal Street is notorious for this. People get swept away by a mob, pushed back into the train they were trying to exit, flailing, screaming and shoving. This is every day, bro.

Yesterday, I was almost hit in the face with multiple skateboards, because God forbid these bros actually use them on the street. (Shouldn’t the skateboard be used to avoid the underground hellscape?!) And then, there is the person annoyed that you sat next to them in the one empty seat, and they fake cough to pretend they are sick so you won’t sit down. Joke is on them because I am not afraid. And if they are sick, stay home. Basic courtesy.

People lack consideration. It should be required if you will use a public good, otherwise, you destroy it for everyone else who is literally paying for the service. (This isn’t free like the library). Sleeping people should be told to sleep at home, unhoused should be sheltered, sick should be told to stay home until they stop coughing up a lung, skateboarders to the streets, the selfish need to learn to share. The blind and impatient need to see that yes, this person needs space to get off the train, they aren’t Casper.

If you can’t play nice, you shouldn’t be allowed to play.

Maybe, we should have metro cards that you must sign on the back with a Code of Conduct. And you take some sort of oath like a Girl Scout. Clearly, the little “Don’t be an asshole” banners in the trains are ignored and illegible because of graffiti. (If you are an artist— do your art off the train).

The trains and stations are hell with a haiku on the wall that I am forced to read because I am smashed against the haiku wall because I am apparently invisible.

Code of Conduct signature cards, with financial penalties if you violate. Think about it. The transport hell is getting old.