Changing Colors

The subway can lull you to sleep if you're fortunate enough to get a seat after a long day at work.  The movement of the train, that rhythmic clack-clack clack-clack..... clack-clack clack-clack of the wheels on the tracks, and the warmth from so many bodies packed together can draw the shades over your eyes for a while. Then when you wake up... where are you?! Did you miss your stop?!

Looking out of the train, to the extent you can even get a glimpse past the bodies crowded between you and the windows, often does not provide any clear view of a station name. What you can almost always see in the old IND subway stations are the columns and possibly the band of colored tiles. Fortunately, they are... no... until recently they were color coded to help identify the station. If I wake up and see green columns, I know I've reached 125th Street. If the columns are yellow, that means I'm at 145th Street. At Tremont, the columns are red.

This easy identification by classifying sets of stations by color was a key design element by Squire Vickers. It was both functional and esthetic. The color banding provides a clean, modern artistic statement that maintains a sense of movement through the station. The transition along the color wheel as the stations change from green to blue to yellow provides a sense of progress as passengers traverse the system. Maintaining a feeling of movement when you are closed inside a crowded metal box can break up the banality of longer subway trips.

Unfortunately, Cuomo's MTA is destroying this historic design in its rush to look like they're doing something to address the subway crisis. Some of the new information display systems appear helpful, but elevators for people with disabilities or strollers are being left out while they inconvenience passengers with months-long full closures for gut rehabs. These station upgrades are essentially cosmetic, and yet the generic contemporary design is reopening indistinguishable, monochromatic gray stations.

If this program is allowed to continue, the stations will become a dreary subterranean Groundhog Day. Every time you open your eyes, it will look like the same station again.

When spending extensive sums of money and disrupting passengers' regular commutes for lengthy periods of time, it is important to understand the original design and how people use the system now, how they experience it. Instead, a simplistic esthetic is being rolled on in a misguided attempt to make the stations look more fresh.

Fortunately, the color of the columns is just paint. Hopefully the original, superior design will be restored the next time the columns need a new coat. Until then, maybe try not to doze off on the train.

Two Sides of the Same Woods

On one side of the road, you have tourists reading plaques about trees. On the other, gay men circle the woods looking for potential hookups. The Bronx River Forest is one of the few remaining sections of the great woodland that once covered the New York region. While we tend to consider the plants and animals that populate wooded areas like this as "wild," this landscape is highly shaped by the physical interventions and social activities of humans. It is easy to overlook how much human action can shape the "natural" environment, but the differences created by separate jurisdictional control over trails winding through the woods along the Bronx River on each side of Allerton Avenue create a stark contrast.

People duck under a fallen tree (covered in poison ivy) on the Blue Trail north of 204th Street in the Bronx Forest managed by the Department of Parks and Recreation

Tourists stop along the trail in the Thain Family Forest in the New York Botanical Garden to read facts about the trees 

South of Allerton Avenue, the Bronx River flows through the New York Botanical Garden. Since the 1890s, this land has been City parkland, part of Bronx Park, which is administered by a private institution specifically charged with the development and maintenance of a great living museum. To the north, the parkland is under conventional control of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

There are some physical differences in terrain between the two sections. To the north, the river passes through a floodplain. After flowing into the garden, it quickly drops into a ravine with some moderately steep slopes down to the river. Nonetheless, the main distinctions between these two sections is how the land is managed and access is controlled.

Seeing Differently by Traveling Differently

The way people perceive space differently based on the way they move through it has long been a fascinating topic. It is a rarity these days that I have a moment to put such observations into any kind of order, but the topic has surfaced for me twice in the past month.

The first was a realization of how differently Van Cortlandt Park in The Bronx is seen by drivers on the Major Deegan Expressway and those who follow the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail:

Very different ways to experience a place depending on how you travel: aqueduct trail or gas station pic.twitter.com/s7DXyfsSyr
— Urban Residue (@urbanresidue) November 29, 2014

Then the other day, @TransitSleuth had a quick series of tweets observing differences between people driving and those riding a bicycle when their route was disrupted:

This massive delay at 11th/12th right now is cluster fucking most people in the area because…
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

…because people being unable to reroute because they suck at path finding in this area. There are TWO routes OVER the tracks < 1 mile.
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

Of course the people NOT driving, are having zero issues because they're just rerouting. The motorists seem to be thoroughly unthinking.
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

It just boggles my mind people are so bloody bad at getting around when their dependency is obviously the automobile.
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

I suspect transit users are almost identical though… if there is a reroute they go dumb. Is this an effect of GPS routing or something?
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

Anyway, just for curiosity I've asked 3 drivers and 1 cyclist about this… the drivers had no idea where to go…
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

The cyclist immediately new multiple routes to circumvent the delay.
— TransitSleuth (@TransitSleuth) December 18, 2014

 Common to both sets of observations is a richer level of detail at slower speeds and the narrowing of focus to the needs of operating the vehicle while driving. There are a few hypotheses to ponder with the tweets by @TransitSleuth, and it is a regret I lack the time and resources to undertake some rigorous research.

Hypotheses on factors that may allow cyclists to identify routes to divert around roadway closures better than drivers:

1. Cyclists tend to take shorter trips. Therefore, they are more likely to be in familiar, home territory when encountering a roadway closure.
2. Vehicular queuing prevents drivers from approaching the incident as closely. Therefore it is harder to identify the specific network links that are closed and need to be circumvented.
3. Higher operating speeds narrow the peripheral vision of drivers. As a result, they have not benefited from views down sidestreets to develop as much awareness of parallel routes.
4. Cyclists must engage in more trial and error to optimize their routes, which provides them with awareness of their alternate routes. Whereas arterial streets generally offer routes optimized to meet the needs of drivers, cyclists often must travel different alternate routes before determining which path best meets their needs for travel time, safety, and other factors. 
5. Mode selection reflects attitudes toward time and speed. People who choose to travel by bicycle demonstrate a lower priority toward speed and a greater willingness to spend time on their trips, which would are traits that would also make them more likely to periodically explore alternate routes.

Of course, I can't really say to what extent any of this speculation is actually true. Perhaps I will have the good fortune of stumbling onto an academic who takes an interest. It would make for some great studies.

A Journey Should End in Poetry

Are iconic places at passenger terminals obsolete as an organizing element? I was surprised that seemed to be the consensus of leading architects on a panel recently. With smart devices, it is increasingly difficult to ever become lost. The scale of modern life has grown beyond the perception of a singular focal point.

I don't buy it.

People still want to feel like they've arrived, and a specific image best captures that moment. The term "selfie" may be new, but the compulsion to take a photo in front of the Flatiron Building, the Eiffel Tower, and every other salient landmark is as old as the point-and-shoot camera.

Great passenger terminals are among the most compelling forms of art that civilization has ever produced. These massive structures transcend their primary utilitarian purpose of moving masses of people to become some of our most memorable civic spaces. It is the iconic point of arrival that makes them memorable.

Of course, many terminals do not rise above their mundane functions. Some become inhumane from a meanness of design or subsequent neglect. When terminals do achieve greatness, they create an intersection of architecture and poetry. They embody the place where memorable journeys begin and end, where people depart and are reunited.

No place epitomizes this more than Grand Central Terminal, where the clock is the heart of New York City. As Billy Collins expressed it in his poem "Grand Central," the city "turns around the golden clock." The poem has been featured by the MTA's Poetry in Motion program: