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New York Times City Room Blog
Hot and Low Down
The New York Times takes timely note of those superheated subway platforms that make summer in the city hard to bear.
Steamy Platforms: A Complaint as Old as the Subways
By Jake Mooney
Whether you like summer weather or not, there is something dispiriting about walking down into a subway station on a hot day and, despite a brief respite from the sun, encountering even worse heat than you faced outdoors. It has been a problem for years, more or less for as long as the subways have existed, and for just as long people have been complaining about it.
I am among them: I entered the Lower East Side-Second Avenue station on the F train the other day, after a hot walk from Tompkins Square Park. I was hit squarely in the face with a wall of heat that made me wish I had walked home.
Nancy's comment #31
Good article, chronic problem. I propose that subway air conditioners be turned off 20 seconds before trains enter their station stops and turned back on 20 seconds after they depart. In this way, people would stay cool in the cars while saving power.
While we're at it, the TA should install timer-thermostats in all its subways that would crank up the air-conditioning during rush hours, but raise the temperature a few degrees during off-peak periods.
Surely, none of this is rocket science!