The Ten Worst Subway Stations

News stories that have “Five Best” or “Ten Worst” in the title are using one of the cheapest and easiest tactics to get people to pay attention. So of course we had to find out what the ten worst subway stations are according to the Daily News:

If your subway train pulls into these subway stations, you may not want to get off. They are worthy of a subway hall of shame – 10 stations so run down and neglected they’re an insult to a city that bills itself as the capital of the world.

Peeling paint, crumbling concrete, leaks and grime are the norm.

. . .

One dilapidated station is among the 46 slated for total rehabilitation in the next five years; another is being razed and rebuilt with federal funds.

Two others on the list had been slated for total makeovers, but were dropped from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 2005-2009 capital plan because of insufficient funds.

. . .

A few of the stations feature obvious safety hazards. All are dismal and in dire need of work.

And transit union leaders charged yesterday that workers performing critical day-to-day maintenance are being shifted to cleaning tasks – trying to hide critical problems with a veneer of cleanliness.

About 50% of subway stations have been brought to “state of good repair” since the 1980s, when a campaign to reverse decades of neglect began, according to MTA documents.

But the following 10 stations, used by about 100,000 riders a day, have been left behind.

Five of the stations are in the Bronx. Also I respectfully disagree about the Fulton Street-Broadway/Nassau station dowtown — it doesn’t seem that dirty! They must have put that in there to curry favor with Pataki’s goons. And, besides, did they all of the sudden fix the Chambers Street JMZ Station or something? That place is the worst (actually, I recall it actually being the worst a few years back)!

I do like the description of the 21st Street/Van Alst G Station in Long Island City, though:

The only good news is that a relatively small amount of people must use this squalid pit as they go to and from work in this industrial area.

Steel pillars, completely stripped of paint and badly corroded, stand as underground symbols of neglect. Silence fills the station, interrupted only by the sound of water dripping onto the soiled platform and the periodic roar of trains.

Black-and-rust-colored stains, about 4-feet wide and 12-feet high, mar tunnel walls.

Across from the platform, there’s a hole in the wall behind a set of tracks. A worker, probably retired by now, apparently wielded a sledgehammer to gain access to a pipe. The hole remains unpatched, another long-forgotten project left unfinished.