When One New Train Equals One Less Express
By RANDY KENNEDY (New York Times)
July 9, 2002

People often complain about politics and diplomacy being vicious zero-sum games, in which one group's gain is achieved only by a painful loss for another. To cheer themselves up, these people should spend a little time aboard the New York City subway.

It is where the terrible trade-off must have been invented, where you can safely bet that giving someone a faster ride means giving someone else, somewhere, a slower one with a transfer long enough to qualify as an Olympic event.

It is where you can have more trains if you want them — of course you can! — but only by making your existing trains shorter.

It is where your express can be less crowded — of course it can! — but only if it does not go where you really want it to go.

And it is where you can find empty seats by the dozen during the rush — of course you can! — but only on the local train that makes three times as many stops as the express to get to Manhattan.

These kinds of Faustian bargains have been struck in the subway almost from the beginning and often with good reason: new train lines are very hard to build, new trains are very expensive to buy, and yet in a city that changes in profound ways, the subway must change, too.

Which brings us back to Queens and the embattled V train, which was last visited in December, when it was begun as an end result of three decades of very expensive work to relieve overcrowding on the lines along Queens Boulevard.

The short version of its story is this: A connection was built to link the Queens Boulevard lines to an underused tunnel that went into Manhattan at 63rd Street. The F express, long overcrowded along Queens Boulevard, was rerouted through this new tunnel. It thus left its old route, through the highly used 53rd Street station, where many Queens riders transfer to the Lexington line.

The V, the brand-new train, was added along Queens Boulevard as a local, going through 53rd as the F once did. The E express remained where it was, also passing through 53rd Street. And the G, which used to run from Brooklyn to Forest Hills, was cut in half, because it could no longer fit on the newly crowded Queens Boulevard tracks.

Transit planners and some riders were quite happy: an honest-to-goodness new line, and nine more trains per hour squeezed into Manhattan during the morning rush.

But many other riders were just as angry: where there were once two express trains going to 53rd Street, now there was one express and one local. And, as the visit last December plainly showed, they were not about to take a local if they could help it, even if this meant attempts to bend the laws of physics by pushing onto an E train.

Transit officials said that New Yorkers were stubborn, that adjustment time was needed, and that the agency intended to stick to its guns. By this spring, they even were taking out promotional ads and asking conductors to start making special announcements, the gist of which was, basically: "Take our train, please!"

Meanwhile, some Queens politicians and transit advocates were growing more dissatisfied and preparing for battle. Last month, they announced a campaign to put pressure on Gov. George E. Pataki and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to flip the routes, putting the F back where God intended it and sending the V up to 63rd Street.

So the impasse stood yesterday morning at 9 at the Forest Hills-71st Avenue station, where roomy V trains were still arriving, like hopeful suitors, and Roger White, one among many, was still angrily not taking them. "I don't even see the purpose of the V," he said. "I think it's just in the way. They need to move it somewhere."

Transit officials say they don't plan to move it anywhere, and insist that they are making converts. Although March statistics show that the V is still operating at only 49 percent of capacity during the rush, Paul Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, said ridership on it has increased 30 percent since it began, and every new V rider, as lonely as he or she might be, relieves crowding on the E.

"Let's face it," he said. "New Yorkers are — how do I say this politely? — New Yorkers are spoiled. We're the only property in North America that has regularly scheduled express service, and people are very reluctant to take locals, even when it makes sense."

Of course, not everyone is. Robert Mavashev, a retired economist, loves the V train. Javier Camacho, a retired electronics technician, also does, and laughs at the punctual souls crowded into the E. "Wake up 10 minutes earlier, that's all," he said yesterday.

Christine Drumgoole and Chrystal Colon do not wake up 10 minutes earlier, but nonetheless they, too, love the V and its empty seats. They take it to go to high school.

"It's school," said Ms. Drumgoole, rolling her eyes. "We don't care if we're late."