A student packed up and prepared to go to school and when they arrived at the subway station, rats were seen jumping up and down on the track. It’s natural to feel disgusted, but this event was not surprising. Rats are often seen strolling through subway tracks which can be contributed to the sanitation of subway stations. Subway sanitation has always been an important issue in New York City, concerning not only BCCHS students but New Yorker’s everywhere.
The subway in the United States has been built for hundreds of years as one of the means of transportation with the largest passenger volume. Millions of passengers will inevitably create garbage and damage the subway facilities, so the aging of subway equipment and systems is unavoidable.
It also takes a lot of resources and funds to maintain and clean the subway in such a large area, but insufficient budgets are making the cleaning difficult. The underground environment also makes it difficult for air ventilation with air pollution also occurring in some stations, causing subways to be hot, humid and smelly.
Qinru Zhou, a sophomore and a commuter from Boston commented on the subway.
“Some people smoke in the subway which really disgusts me, and there were many homeless people there, and the subway announcements are very poor,” Zhou said.
The data shows that the MTA spent nearly 200 million dollars hiring private contractors to clean up the subways. However, Hannah Lu, a senior of BCCHS, expressed her dissatisfaction with the improvement of the subway.
“I feel like there was no change in the times I have been riding the subway,” she said.
The MTA has supplemented cleaning and sanitizing operations with non-union contract workers, but as many as 200 union cleaning jobs sit unfilled. One of the possible reasons for the lack of workers can be the low pay and difficult conditions which is a current point of contention for the current cleaners.
“I think there’s definitely room for improvement. I personally think that the sanitation level in the subway is very poor. Sometimes you can see and smell poor [sanitation levels] from the stairs,” Lu said.
Randy Li, a senior, shares similar feelings with Lu.
“Sometimes when I am tired I want to be able to sit on the train but there are times where there may be things in the way or the seat is dirty,” Li said. “I feel disgusted about the subway because subway trains and stations are dirty and there are rats near the tracks.”
Although the environment of the subway is very poor, it is an indispensable form of transportation with how the subway has facilitated the passage of many people in New York. Its route and operation have saved many people money and time.
“The subway is that the system is nice, meaning you can get to a different part of NYC. Also it connects different neighborhoods,” Li said.
