The MTA is preserving straphangers on their toes.
The transit company put in 4 new “leaning bars” on the W. Fourth St. station of the A, C and E trains in Greenwich Village over the weekend, a part of a long-running pilot program that the MTA says is about value.
The skinny, slanted steel bars are supposed to give riders one thing to lean towards whereas ready for a prepare, changing at the very least one of many station’s conventional wood benches.
“They cost one-tenth of the other benches,” Minton mentioned — $455 apiece in contrast with greater than $4,000 for a wood bench. “We will see how it is received.”
A go to to the station Monday discovered 4 leaning benches on the A, C, and E cease — two on the uptown aspect and two on the downtown aspect. One wood bench remained on the downtown platform, however the leaning bars had been the one possibility apart from standing on the uptown platform.
Downstairs, on the platform for the B, D, F and M trains, all wood benches had been nonetheless in place.
Evan Simko-Bednarski / New York Each day Information
New “leaning benches,” which the MTA put in on the West 4th St. subway station over the weekend, are pictured on Monday, March 17, 2025. (Evan Simko-Bednarski / New York Each day Information)
Leaning benches first arrived within the subway system in 2018, once they had been put in at Brooklyn’s 53rd St. station on the R line.
Joe Rappaport, head of the Brooklyn Middle for Independence of the Disabled and a frequent transit advocate, slammed the constructions as “a classic example of hostile architecture.”
“It is clear that they are putting these in in place of benches to make it hard for people who might be homeless to lie down,” he mentioned. “These don’t help anybody.”
Anne Lathrup, 27, an Atlanta resident visiting the town, leaned up towards one of many bars Monday.
“I think it’s perfect for us,” she mentioned of odd straphangers, “but the first thing I thought was this is meant to keep people from lying down.”
However Sander Duncan, a 38-year-old Brooklynite ready close to Lathrup, mentioned he doesn’t really feel protected leaning towards the station’s track-side columns and finds the outdated wood benches considerably “gross.”
“It’s a happy medium,” he mentioned of the brand new constructions earlier than boarding a downtown A prepare. “This has my vote.”
Initially Printed: March 17, 2025 at 5:19 PM EDT
