New York City Subway Riders, The Internet Is Now Everywhere
This morning I got on the G line to go to work. Normally, if I’m listening to Spotify, once I hit Broadway, my music cuts out. But today that did not happen, and it continued not to happen for the remainder of my ride—all the way down to Hoyt-Schermerhorn, and even still when I transferred to the A/C. The whole time, the stream was strong. Was this a New Year’s fluke?
No, this was not. This, it turns out, was an intentional, and—astonishingly—successfully timely project of the MTA, who had predicted in the beginning of December that they would be on track to have all 278 underground New York City Subway stations connected to WiFi by the start of 2017.
With the opening of the 2nd Avenue Subway over the long weekend, projected charging stations in up-coming subway cars, and now this, our underground transit has started to catch up with—if not the future—at least the present. The MTA has setup a website so that you can track, and double check, that your stations are connected. Oddly, when I checked the G line this morning, the site did not confirm what I’ve reported, and only listed a handful of G stations that were online. Still, the proof seems to be in the pudding? The pudding being of course my 15 minutes of uninterrupted music.
It was a fun ride, partly because it was such a novelty and surprise that it had happened at all. And yet, part of me was sad. Underground was the one place I could shut out everything—read with greater concentration than I can almost anywhere. Now, that refuge too is gone. But I guess when I’m feeling down about that, and I’ve forgotten my reading material, I can just get it online.
H/T: DNAinfo