"I've gone local."
These words rang through my head while taking the Q train to work at 4:45 in the morning, and to a lot of you, they mean nothing. To the millions of people who take MTA transport, however, it means that whatever "express" train you thought you got on, is actually making every stop (a "scenic route", of sorts) instead of the minimal stops an express train makes on its regular run.
I don't have a problem with a longer train ride, to be honest. I just wish I knew when to expect them. A reasonable person might retort, "Why not look at a schedule!", and that would be a proper response in any other city. While there are schedules available here, however, no one seems to make use of them. Trains arrive and depart at will, which is about every 5 to 10 minutes during normal business hours - so I have no complaints on that, however they also get delayed or re-routed at will as well.
A lot of trains actually have signs clarifying any misgivings about the route or routes that stop on that track. For example, at Church Avenue, the B train says where it goes and when - late nites and weekends have exclusions. At the same stop, however, the Q train placard tells riders that it's an express to Manhattan at "all times." I don't pretend to know the inner workings of the MTA, however in the month I've been in this city, I've "gone local" twice when I shouldn't have, have been told my train is delayed because of "an investigation" at another station twice, and have once been informed that my Q train was becoming an N train and that instead of waiting on the same track for the following Q, I'd have to walk up the stairs, to the right, down the ramp, to the left and then back down some stairs to catch another Q - which ended up being late.
Announcements on board or in the train stations are a normal expectation as well, however, half the time the announcements on board are inaudible due to a problem with volume control, and when an announcement inside the station is made my a human instead of a machine, it's inaudible because of speed of delivery or the sounds of thousands of overlapping footsteps and conversations.
A lot of times things go right on the MTA trains, however, and without them I wouldn't get to play my movie making game, nor would I have had half the conversations I had in my first week of being here. Still, it's not unheard of to have to deal with crazy women on ecstasy shouting "those ain't my niggas, them's white fingas on the triggas", foul smells, mystery goops and liquids, litter, and plain old assholes. For all of that, it's not unreasonable to ask to be informed about which route my train is going and when.
