The Subway Is Not Scary
Fear of the subway is a mark of low moral character.
In 2014, New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro (who would go on to become one of the paper’s superstars as host of its podcast “The Daily”) posted this tweet:
After receiving a good deal of ridicule, Barbaro deleted the tweet. The nervous sentiment he expressed, however, lives on. Just this week, in its anti-endorsement of Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race, the Times editorial board explained why it preferred Andrew Cuomo, a famously corrupt former governor and sexual harasser who resigned in disgrace, over a progressive like Mamdani.
“Many longtime New Yorkers… have worried that their city was heading back to the bad old days of the 1970s and ’80s,” the paper warned. “Subway trips can have a chaotic or even menacing quality.”
In this vague but pervasive fear of the subway system, the good liberals at the Times are not alone. Their reactionary colleagues at the New York Post scream endlessly about every crime on the subway—the tabloid has an entire “Subway Shoves” tag page on its website. Fox News carries this torch on a national scale, using subway crime as a club with which to beat allegedly “delusional” Democratic city leaders, who have allowed the transit system to become a den of iniquity. This is a regular talking point for Republican politicians as well, who spin tales of dangerous trains as a justification for defunding mass transit. "The truth is, transit across America is dangerous," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said this spring. "And these liberals, liberal mayors, they want everybody out of cars and into trains — but they made the trains unsafe so nobody really wants to ride them."
All of these sweaty warnings harden into accepted precepts deep in the American heartland. I recall chatting with some women from Texas a couple of years ago, who were visiting Manhattan to demonstrate at the courthouse in support of their hero, Donald Trump, who was being indicted at the time. I asked them what else they planned to do on that lovely, sunny day in the city. “Probably nothing!” they answered. They were taking a cab back to their hotel and hunkering down, for safety, lest they be subjected to the robberies and murders that plague the city and its blood-drenched transit system.
This, you see, is an issue where the conventional wisdom of Fox News-watching middle American Republican yokels and Times-reading upper-class Manhattanites coalesces into one shared belief: The subway is scary. It is dangerous. And any aspiring leader who does not propose to flood the subway system even further with armed officers is just not being serious.
Here is my counterpoint: No it’s not.
Subway’s not scary. It’s fine and safe. It’s full of women and children. There are tons of old ladies on there. You should def be helping those old ladies carry their grocery carts up the stairs. That is an issue we can discuss. The rest of the stuff, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
You sound real corny being scared of the subway.
When I say this, you may read my meaning to be, “The subways are fine if you are brave,” or “Riding the subway is a character-building because it teaches you to be tough.” No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the subway is fine. It is not scary. It is the standard mode of transportation for millions of New Yorkers. Six million rides a day. Let me try to put it in terms that a non-New Yorker can understand. “I am scared of riding the Google shuttle bus to my job at Google.” “I am scared of riding the Epcot monorail.” See how crazy that sounds? Same basic thing.
Most of the people who live outside the city drive cars to work. This is far more dangerous than riding the subway. Last year there were ten murders in the NYC subway system, with well over a billion total rides taken. During the same time period, there were 253 traffic fatalities in New York City. One person dead every day and a half. Cars? Those things are fucking dangerous. The subway? You might be tempted to buy a churro. Could be damaging to your diet, yeah. But you can work it off. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.
There are homeless people on the subway. They are there because they have no homes. Some of them are mentally ill. If you ride the subway a lot, it is possible that you will see a homeless person who does not smell good sleeping on a train. It is possible that you will see a mentally ill person ranting and raving. This may make you uncomfortable. But imagine how they feel. Not only are they homeless, but they are also in need of mental health treatment, and they don’t have it, and instead they are consigned to riding a train all day, where people constantly move away from them and view them with disgust. An awful fate.
What might a serious policy response to this situation look like, from mature adults who take this issue seriously? Is it… “have cops with guns arrest them all?” Come on. Give me a freaking break. Stupid Rambo ass policy. A real solution would involve a serious investment in mental health and housing programs, and then having a dedicated team of outreach workers who can go onto subways and connect the homeless people there to the services they need. Incidentally, this is Zohran Mamdani’s proposal. When Serious Political Thinkers talk about it, they say “he wants to defund the police.”
I grew up in Florida, where there was no mass transit, and severe racial and economic segregation in daily life. When I first visited New York City, one of the things that impressed me the most was that you could get on a subway car and see everybody—businessmen, construction workers, teachers, homeless people, students, teenage breakdancers, every race, all types of nationalities, all together, at least momentarily, in the same space, equal. In Florida, and in most places in America, there was simply no parallel for that sort of everyday experience. Wow! That’s cool.
Do you find that scary? Who are you, David Duke?
If you ride the subway a lot, it is possible that you have had a scary experience on it. I do not minimize that. It is possible to be robbed, assaulted, or otherwise subjected to something traumatic while on the train. It is also possible to be subjected to something traumatic in a house, in a school, in an office, on a street, in a park, or at the mall. We can respect the gravity of traumatic experiences without spinning into the illogical and frankly insane position of saying, “No one should ever be on a street or in a house or in a park again because bad things happen there.” That does not make sense.
As with all of the places above, the chances that you will have some terrible thing happen to you when you get on the subway is very, very low. Here is what will probably happen to you instead: You will be whisked anywhere in the five boroughs that you want to go, at any hour of the day or night, for less than three bucks. Not too shabby!
Subways bring people together. Subways are a vital public good. Subways open the city to everyone. Subways make New York City livable for regular people, who do not own cars. Subways are good. In a subway you might get a mariachi show. In a subway you might fall in love. In a subway you might see a dog. A gateway to new places! A celebration of diversity! A communion with society! The subway, baby! A wonder of the world! A treasure to be viewed with awe and admiration! We fucking love it!
You’re scared? You’re scared of this? You’re scared of the beating heart of New York City’s magical essence? Because you’re some sort of stuffy anxiety freak? Okay. Fine. Drive your ass on home. More legroom for the rest of us.
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Related reading: My interview last year with Zohran Mamdani; Everyone Into The Grinder; Carefully Groomed Stubble Is a Mark of Low Moral Character.
What do you do on the subway? Play Candy Crush? Sure, but also you could read a book. Such as “The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor,” a “lively” and “impressive” look at the labor movement, full of “passionate, muckraking spirit,” according to the New York Times. You could order that book from an independent bookstore and read it on the subway. While wearing a How Things Work t-shirt, theoretically.
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Say that! I’m so sick of the anti-city sentiment that circulates everywhere these days
THANK YOU.
I take the subway multiple times a week....because NEW YORKERS HAVE TO TAKE THE SUBWAY. If all ten million of us were getting attacked on a regular basis, that would be one thing, but as you have illustrated so well above, that does not happen. My biggest annoyance lately is people smoking cigarettes on the platforms sometimes, and accidentally getting into the smelly car (100% my bad, if its an empty-ish car at rush hour, I know better). But my discomfort is not actual danger and I wish people would understand this.