Climate Change Means Subway Platforms Will Be Even More Unbearable
If hurricanes, freakishly cold weather, freakishly hot weather, and the possibility that Manhattan will soon turn into a scene from a Michael Bay disaster flick aren’t enough to get you all riled up about carbon emissions, consider this: A draft of a report commissioned by governor Cuomo suggests that rising temperatures will soon make subway platforms into “dangerously hot” saunas. Disgusting, unbearable, rat-infested saunas.
The report comes from a panel that Cuomo convened to help the MTA face the challenges of the 21st century, Capital New York reports, and the challenges have a lot to do with global warming.
“Go to Union Square on not even a really hot day,” instructed Richard Barone, the director of transportation programs at the Regional Plan Association. “Just because the way the station is designed. It’s a steamer…When it was first designed, it was too hot. They had to actually poke holes in the sidewalks” to ventilate the place.
Plus all the extra electronics and air conditioning on the trains are adding to the problem. Ad the heat’s not just wreaking havoc with your pores/will to live, it’s also damaging the subway equipment. Great. If you’ll excuse us, we’ll be busy inventing a transportable igloo.