Do You Work For the MTA? Tell Us Your Story

This morning’s rush hour subway delaypocalypse in New York City felt almost routine, what with the similar delays in every past week in recent memory. You know who might be able to shine some real light on this bullshit? Some MTA employees.

In a rational world, large cities would make the funding of mass transit a top priority. In the world that we live in, our largest city’s mass transit system is funded at the state level by a semi-corrupt governor who is feuding with the mayor of New York City and is prone to grand gestures rather than boring things like “maintenance.” The MTA itself, as an agency, is a bureaucratic nightmare with its own set of issues. All of this translates to you sitting in a stopped train in the fucking tunnel for 20 fucking minutes every morning with a crying baby when YOU PAID YOUR FUCKING TAXES AND BOUGHT THIS EXPENSIVE ASS METRO CARD ON TOP OF IT SO WHAT THE FUCK??

Here is where the MTA employees come in. No one knows the internal operations of a system better than those who work there. We want to hear from those people about what they think is wrong with the MTA. Do you drive a train? Fix the tracks? Maintain the electrical system, work in a station booth, clean things up at night, direct the traffic, or otherwise spend your working life making the subway system wrong? Email me. Tell me what you do, what your work days are like, how employees are treated, and what you think the MTA does well—and poorly. There are usually a handful of issues that are obvious to everyone who works in a dysfunctional place. What are they?

We can keep you anonymous if we decide to publish anything. Email me. Let us share our frustrations together.