Saturday, August 8, 2015

Fewer cans make for cleaner subway

From the Daily News:

Leave people with no place to throw their garbage, and they’ll take their garbage with them.

That was the novel hope of the MTA when the agency removed those clunky cylindrical bins from dozens of stations. Platforms without a place to stash trash were none the worse, a test program over the last four years found.

NYC Transit President Carmen Bianco called the results “counterintuitive.” He said that the agency “asked the customers for their cooperation, it looks like they listened.”

Trash cans were first removed from 10 stations around the city, including the bustling Flushing-Main St. stop on the 7 line and 57th Street F train stop in Manhattan. Those stations saw 66% fewer trash bags hauled out.

Then the MTA yanked cans out of 29 stations on the J, M, Z lines in July 2014. That produced more than a third fewer garbage bags, according to the MTA.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

An agency that wants to demonstrate a desired result performs its own study and guess what? The study confirms the result they were looking for. What a surprise.

How anyone can say, out loud and with a straight face, that fewer garbage cans means less garbage is beyond me.

Clearly these people are either delusional or compulsive liars.

It's no surprise that they conducted their study far away from the wealthiest neighborhoods and heavily touristed areas.

I have personally witnessed the before and after on several MTA platforms and I personally can tell you that the platforms and the tracks have more garbage now.

The MTA is cutting costs by treating the non-welathy as second-class citizens. It is plain as day. And shame on any elected official or media outlet that lets them get away with this.

Anonymous said...

In the case of Flushing I'll bet the trash got dumped first....into the already overflowing street cans near the subway entrances.
Garbage can be seen spilling onto the sidewalk from them.
Hey, let's remove a few of those strategic street cans too. Flushing is a dump. Let's encourage the use of its sidewalks.
The rats gotta live too.

Anonymous said...

Less service
Higher fares
Sounds like a great deal

Anonymously Grey Gardens said...

Alas, this is what happens when local and regional state government behave like unresponsive tyrants and derelict thieves---and always from the top of power and privilege on down, that is an entrenched part of corruption itself, not to mention profligate, wanton waste.

Case in point: I recently took in a Broadway show and dinner with family members, and it was agreed that taking a subway would be more efficient and save time. It was neither. Before the unforgivably late train ever pulled into the draconian station, the station's filthy and depressing condition itself, at Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike was a mess of strewn about garbage and seedy looking. Then, much later, when my party and I arrived at the West 4th Street station after the show, and on our way to dinner, my aunt noticed that the station's long running booth had been completely removed, where the entire sub level space now looked dungeon-like, with excessive garbage, and a few aggressive beggars and assorted homeless people everywhere. It looked like a movie set ready for some grimy and unsavory action to prevail---and it was much scarier---given the reality!

That was my last subway ride for a lifetime, for too many disgusting conditions to name. The entire MTA behemoth is drunk with power and privilege that was never in their purview to adjudicate, while their unpolished, purported, public service management worthlessness continues to destroy the entire system (from within!), with vastly overpaid, intensely incompetent, above ground stooges of dysfunctional management---as the entire system below (now completely comprised of Fourth World peasantry, dependent on public access transport), continues to decay and erode to levels that even Third World countries themselves haven't seen in years!

And, given the monstrously false, fake, failed and corrupt leadership in Albany and City Hall, life itself, livelihoods and infrastructure keep getting worse by the hour---and the hijacked public be eternally damned (again, still, always and forevermore!)!

Anonymous said...

They are doing this to avoid hidden bombs.

Anonymous said...

"They are doing this to avoid hidden bombs."

Unlikely. Terrorists probably wouldn't target the neighborhood stations that had the trash cans removed. (too poor - media wouldn't care)

Anonymous said...

If it works for garbage pails maybe it would work for politicians, get rid of filthy lying politicians,
Yea, that's the answer.

Anonymously Grey Gardens said...

That was an excellent reply, Anonymous, when you suggested to get rid of filthy, lying politicians, the same way that the MTA claims has worked for getting rid of garbage pails (which are truly one and the same).

In fact, here in New York (as with everywhere else), it's all of the corrupt, dishonest, derelict politicians themselves who continue to block all honest, ethical leadership (that leads by example), not to mention all progress, achievement and inclusion that has never benefited their purported constituents.

What needs to be abolished are all practicing, Neo-Fascist council members, borough presidents (powerless fronts of worthless inefficiency), the Public Advocate's Office debacle (my five-year-old nephew is more competent and proactive to get something---or, anything done), and millions of squandered city dollars could be funneled back into more police, school safety, fire houses and essential services that would finally start to accommodate the massive overcrowding of newly arrived residents whose quality of life is less than nil!

Once all of the vastly overpaid and corrupt politicians are out the door (via impeachment), then community stability magically restores itself from within!

Anonymous said...

So where exactly is all of the litter ending up? I have a very good idea.

Anonymous said...

I ride into and out of the 57th St. Station on the "F" line. The garbage is on the tracks, on the floor, on the stairs, etc. It doesn't work!