NYC Subway

All aboard! This essential engine tirelessly lugs the masses around NYC in an intricate ever-growing network. It keeps the city’s commuters moving constantly, and it never closes. It’s open 24/7/365.  Next stop: FYI. Stand clear of the closing doors. Get ready to ride the NYC subway with us on this week’s episode of FYI!

Transcript

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[Music] all aboard this essential engine tirelessly lugs the masses around new york city in an intricate ever growing network it keeps the city's commuters moving constantly and it never closes it's open 24 7 365. next stop fyi stand clear of the closing doors please get ready to ride the new york city subway with us on this week's episode of f y ah welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello my amigos and welcome to this another exciting edition of fyi for your english the show where we teach you english among other things entreotras cosas and i hope you guys are enjoying the show i'm always trying to improve on it and also we say to improve on como aves visto we i'm always trying to improve on the show and make it better so please let me know what i can do i love to hear from you i love your feedback and i'm always interested in getting ideas from you guys for future topics in fact many of the episodes that we've looked at so far were recommended by you guys our students our patrons and all of the listeners so thank you thank you thank you to each and every one of you for listening to this podcast it's growing day by day and the only reason for that is because of you guys you're liking it and you're spreading the word and i really appreciate that and as you guys know there's a bonus part to this podcast and that's available exclusively for patrons and you can get more information at patreon.com if you want to get classes with me pdfs that accompany this and well so much more just take a gander it's patreon.com alberto alonso and you can join our curious community but if you're not interested in that and that's okay you know everybody's got their reasons if you're it's not in your budget no esen that's okay too you just have to be very patient because eventually i release this bonus content and i make it available for everybody and let's stop right there on that word available that's a word that my students hate available available say it with me say it a million times if you have to and if it's still too tough you can say free you can say are you available or are you free so as i said the bonus content eventually comes out free if you can be very very patient but it's not just about the bonus content our community is a group of people who are growing together as we learn about a bunch of different topics and we have classes weekly we have our review classes monthly we look at all different topics in english and if you want to find out more as i said go over to patreon.com slash alberto alonso and find out what everybody's talking about and that said i'd like to send a shout out to all my patrons there's over a hundred of us now and we're growing and growing every day so thank you thank you thank you to all of you guys you can hear how choked up i am emotional in my voice i appreciate it i never imagined that this community would grow so fast and have so many amazing people so a shout out to all of you especially my super duper students frantisco tony roberto jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and lolis and don't forget about my interstellar students carmen diego pilar and diana okay now i've given you my spiel meet now it's time to get into the episode now i don't know about you folks gente is folks but i'm excited about this episode because well the subway is something i'm very familiar with in fact i rode it to work every day and i was late every day and it wasn't the subway's fault it was my fault it's what we call poor planning and we'll talk about that because you can get an excuse that's right a written excuse from the new york city subway telling them that you were late to work because of a delay or something like that but the only thing is i don't know how many times your boss is going to let you get away with that now that didn't exist when i was riding the subway but i'll tell you more about that later on because so many people depend on the subway they rely on the subway to get to work as we call them commuters to commute is to go to and from work or school it's a very important word we've looked at it before commuter hour is natural rush hour in los estados unidos so i started the intro off by saying all aboard todos abordos then i said this essential engine now the same thing you say um we say an engine just think about the pronunciation there engine and also essential two difficult words to pronounce but you know me i i'm always going for that double alliteration so this essential engine tirelessly now obviously if tired is kansado it means since tirelessly lugs and to lug is to carry or to transport the masses la las i think you say around new york city in an intricate iquito establish intricate ever-growing network and ever-growing como te puedes imaginares que siempre esta creciendo then i said it keeps the city's commuters moving constantly and i already told you what commuters are those are the people who take the subway every day and the buses and well the whole system and i think one of the most baffling facts about the new york city subway is that it never closes i remember that was just such a an awesome thing because you said okay as long as i have my metro card i can go anywhere at any time at least that was the feeling of freedom that it gave you and i remember when i moved to madrid i used to go out i was a bit of a party animal i used to love to go out and i would have to wait until 6 a.m for them to open up the metro again but not in new york you can go home whenever you're ready now obviously the trains don't come as frequently at you know they come obviously frequently during rush hour they add even extra trains they have express trains and again in the bonus part of today's show i'll give you a little bit of my insider my inside information insiders algendentro so inside information is some tips some pointers on how to survive in the new york city subway so it never closes so i know i know what you're thinking ah it smells like piss there are rats everywhere you're right you're right absolutely there are always delays they're always rerouting trains yes you're right you're right you're right but remember it never closes so maintenance whatever has to be done on this network has to be done during operating hours so that's 24 7 365. it's open all year round and then i imitated the famous sound i said next stop fyi proxima para fyi and the the classic line that you'll hear in the new york city subway is stand clear of the closing doors please and then you'll hear that chime and then you know that you are off on an amazing adventure just as we are here today on this episode and remember i said before we ride the subway or you say i was on the subway so i used to ride the subway a lot or i was on the subway every day a little bit different but those would be the prepositions and the verbs that we use and remember ride is an irregular verb i believe we looked at it in the harley-davidson episode right with motorcycles ride road ridden just be careful because a lot of my students say ryden so if you've ever ridden the train que what what are you talking about alberto what do you mean ridden the train el tren i thought we were talking about the subway or as the british say the tube of the underground which we don't call it either of those we call it the train como te acao de feed yeah if you live in new york city we don't call it new york city we call it the city i live in the city i'm taking the train because well new yorkers believe that there is no other city out there that there aren't any other train systems out there so if you hear a new yorker say i take the train to work more often than not they're talking about the subway now that doesn't mean we don't have commuter trains the commuter trains would be the equivalent of the thercanias i believe in spain and new yorkers have always had a love-hate relationship with the subway i mean it's great it's convenient it's open 24 hours it gets you where you need to go but it stinks and in the summer it's really hot and i saw some studies that said that uh the contamination levels uh in the air at some of the platforms underground was astoundingly high so there are a lot of negative things and in fact uh a couple years ago there were it was a lot of press a lot of news around this that the new york city subway was crumbling right to crumble is to fall and break into pieces that's a very important part of the city as we said before it's essential i think that's so important to point out that new york city wouldn't work without its subway and as you can imagine it is the busiest subway network in the united states it's the seventh busiest in the world though because you got to remember asia they got some mega cities over there you know these cities were they may they dwarf new york to dwarf something is to make it look smaller the word dwarf is inanno so i imagine you're curious and you'd like to know what the busiest subway system in the world is do you know can you guess it's tokyo that's right tokyo takes the cake la palma it's got more than double the amount cantidad double the amount of riders as the new york city subway now you also have to look at the size of each city as well but how many people ride the new york city subway well these are some stats that i looked at and remember this podcast was recorded in 2021 and these stats are ever changing stats is a a shorter way to say statistics so the average weekday ridership that's a good word so the people are the writers and ridership is like viewership in audiences ridership well are you ready an astounding 5.5 million people ride the subway on an average weekday that is astonishing now how many cars are there and cars are how we say bagones we say coaches pretty easy because it's a word you already knew well it takes 6684 cars to move those 5.5 million people around every weekday and how many stations is that that's 472 so almost 500 stations and as i said the subway is ever growing but an interesting fact about the new york city subway is even though the word sub right underground bajo tierra only about 60 percent of the new york city subway is underground some of it is elevated track and speaking of elevated track if you want to get one of the best views that you'll ever get on a subway i mean for just two bucks a little over two bucks you'll get one of the greatest views of the new york city skyline and this is at the elevated smith and 9th street stop on the f and g line it is definitely one of the best views in the city so it's kind of weird almost half of this is not underground but it's still called the subway well you know us and our naming we call it something because it's comfortable and how much track is necessary tracks so to move all these cars around this metropolis well i have the number here but let me just give you an idea geographically speaking if you laid all the train tracks end to end they would stretch from new york to chicago that is mind-blowing and not only is there a lot of track and there are a lot of cars but there are a lot of different lines that in some places they they coincide they go together especially at 42nd street we'll talk about that that's a very important stop i mean 42nd street come on i don't even have to even if you've never been to new york you know that that's important but there are seven numbered routes so it's the one train the two three four five six and seven and when i lived there there was a nine train but the nine train is no longer in existence bye bye nine train i'll miss you but it doesn't end there there are 15 lettered roots so you can take the a b c d e f g j l m n q r w and z and you can connect to the one two three you see how it can get a bit confusing but as i said in the bonus part i'm gonna give you guys some tips because really the new york subway i think it's pretty easy to get around as long as you know a couple key things which i'll share with you now let's go back to times square you all know times square well why is times square important well it's the crossroads of the world as we said in our times square episode but it is also the busiest station the busiest station in the whole network and 12 lines 12 subway lines go through times square and stop there so and that connects with port authority and it connects with our second busiest which is grand central station which i think we need to do an episode on that and the third busiest is 34th street and herald square and we're going to talk about too in the bonus part some of the art that you can find inside the subway system times square is a great place to catch some live music or even some murals so i think it's time we take a look at the history of the subway and there was a talk of a subway or something similar to a subway now that i think about it something similar to elon musk's hyperloop and this was a guy named alfred eli beach and he built the first demonstration right it was a demonstration for an underground transit system this was in new york city and this was in 1869 and he opened it in 1870 now the only problem is it went 95 meters and well it never extended any further it never came to fruition but the reason i say that it's like elon musk's hyperloop is it was called the beach pneumatic transit and it basically pressurized the same way you would send you know an object flying in these pressurized tubes now i'm not too sure of the science behind it but it sounds strikingly similar so that wasn't the start of the subway but that was one of the predecessors one of the the sparks let's say una de las chispas and then it was the great blizzard of 1888 and a blizzard is a snowstorm and yeah it took a blizzard a snow storm to show people how important having this transport this idea this underground transport idea as a reality because anybody who has ever been in a blizzard in new york city knows that it shuts down the city above ground it doesn't affect the underground so this was a really really important factor they said well we get a lot of blizzards and the city can't come to a standstill a standstill is estar quieto parano so a plan for this subway construction was approved in 1894 and six years later in 1900 at the turn of the century construction began the oldest structure subway structure still in use today was opened in 1885 it's part of the bmt lexington avenue line and that's interesting because you're saying bmt what is that well initially there was the irt the bmt and the ind now i don't remember what each one means but let's put it this way there were different companies operating different lines it makes sense doesn't it now the first line that was open was the irt that was in 1904 the first underground line so we could say the irt was the first one but that was in 1904 in 1939 they realized wait we can't have three different entities and the irt the bmt the ind it's too confusing let's put them all under one umbrella let's bring them all together and this became the largest railroad merger in history and a murderous una fusion the word merge is fusionarse it's a very common word you'll see it a lot in the papers in los periodicos now an interesting thing that i told you guys the first underground line of the subway was opened in 1904 this was almost 36 years after the opening of the first elevated line so there was elevated transit but here we're talking about the subway the underground when they were able to put it underground because let's be honest if you've ever seen a map of the underground of new york city it's got to be a quagmire a quagmireus leo i think you would say alguna lokura because you've got water pipes no la tuberia electricity i mean how sewers subway lines i imagine that underground new york city is just as congested as above ground new york city but by bringing the subway underground or at least 60 percent of it well this was a good way to make sure that it wasn't overcrowded above ground yeah let's overcrowd the people below ground and that's when you get some angry subway riders yeah i've got to say there were a few times there when i was sitting there in the middle of august you know just staring down the person in front of me you know beads of sweat dripping off of my face and i was like if you say something to me i'm gonna punch you out and i'm not a violent person but i was just exhausted i think i was suffering from heat stroke or exhaustion or something because as anybody knows new york is an extreme city as far as temperature is concerned as well it's no exception so there are brutal winters and summers where it's really humid and it can get really hot down there and remember i'm talking about you know with the cars that have air conditioning you know and still i remember it being totally unbearable in support just imagine the people before 1967. so anybody who rode the subway in 66 67 65 they were in bad shape because ac ac is the american way to say air conditioning los britanni goes deep in air con well it wasn't introduced until june 67. so if i'm telling you a horror story about how hot it was with ac i don't even want to begin to imagine the sweltering heat before that year it must have been like a sauna and the subway has had so many firsts it's gone through so many changes we'll talk a little bit in the bonus part about the tokens and the metro cards but also if you remember in the pizza episode we talked about the new york pizza connection and this is the fact that the price of a slice of pizza and a ride on the subway are the same if one goes up the other goes up i was gonna say if one goes down but they never go down so when one goes up the other goes up and at the time of the recording of this podcast you can for five bucks get a ride on the subway and a slice of pizza but you know how inflation works so hurry up but it just goes to show how deep it is you know in our culture it's such a part of our culture that we have you know connections and i told you guys in the baseball episode about the subway series the subway series is when the the new york yankees play against the new york mats and why do they call it the subway series well because they ride to the two different stadiums on the subway so it's a part of every aspect of our culture it has seeped into a penetrato every aspect from food to baseball and we're gonna wrap up this episode the first part of this episode talking about where trains go when they die yeah this is a question that parents are often asked by their children no that's not true but where do these trains go because obviously they have to update the trains and every couple years they they bring in new trains ergonomic seating you know they're always trying to improve it i must say that and it must be a thankless job thankless poco agrade well some of these cars have been recycled and i don't mean recycled to be trains or to be you know to operate on another subway system but i mean they've been recycled to be part of an artificial reef and a reef is this is a reef that has been created off the coast of the atlantic ocean it's called slaughter beach in delaware and it's called the red bird reef it was established in 2001 and they've been working on it ever since and why is it called the red bird reef well i think this is amazing one of the models a very famous model of a subway car is called the red bird and guess what subway cars were submerged to create this artificial reef you guessed it the red bird series so obviously they took all of the stuff that would maybe rust or anything that would contaminate the ocean off of it and they just left the shells and then they sank 714 red bird cars and did it work well uh 400 times more marine food has been found over the last seven years in this area as i said in delaware so this is really cool i mean as a new yorker as somebody who used these cars every day and use them in a functional way to get to work it's amazing to think that a car that i rode on on the new york city subway is now breeding new life down at the bottom of the ocean and that there are there's coral growing on it and fish and there's life coming from this and i guess that's a way of making sure that the new york city subway will live on forever it's a way of taking something and creating and bringing out new life and it reminds me of the cycle of life round and round up and down the cycle continues but our episode ends right here unless you have access to the bonus part of today's[Music] fyi you