The subway network is huge, there are 472 stations today, and millions of people use the subway every day
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The author Fran Lebowitz once remarked in an interview with the director Martin Scorsese that the New York subway was so full of germs that if it fell on the subway, it would leave a diamond there for fear of itself to catch terrible diseases. Lebowitz basically doesn’t touch anything on the subway and advocates the thesis that people who actually do this either perish miserably or are immune to all pathogens in the world. That is perhaps a little bit exaggerated, but what is true: The New York subway was really not clean. Until the pandemic came.
Since the subway started operating on October 27, 1904, trains have been running 24 hours a day. The network is huge, there are 472 stations today, and millions and millions of people use the subway every day. According to the operating company MTA, the record comes from a September day in 2014 when more than six million people were on the system. At rush hours only those who really have no other choice drive, it is a mixture of unwanted closeness, unwanted smell and claustrophobia.
In May 2020, the city of the pandemic stopped because of the 24-hour service to clean and disinfect the trains between one o’clock and five o’clock at night. Anyone who was out on the subway in the morning experienced a miracle: empty trains at rush hour, the smell of cleaning agents in the air and not of sweat, and every lost diamond would have been picked up from the freshly mopped floors without hesitation.
The trains are now running 24 hours a day again, and everything else is, despite everything, fortunately almost the same as it used to be.
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