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Is the NYC Subway Still the Lifeblood of the City, or a Relic in Decline?
11/17/2025There’s a sound New Yorkers know by heart: the screech of steel wheels echoing through century-old tunnels, scaring thousands of rats that live beneath the platforms. The NYC subway isn’t pretty. It’s not clean. It’s often loud - and sometimes a little creepy. But it’s also the sound of movement: millions commuting, dreaming, surviving. New York is a city of grit and resilience, where people from every corner of the world squeeze into tight spaces with big dreams and endless possibilities. And the subway is just as diverse, tough, and vibrant as the city it serves. And it’s more than a transit system - it’s the city’s beating heart.
1. A System That Never Sleeps (But Probably Should).
The NYC subway is one of the few in the world that runs 24/7, 365 days a year. It’s a badge of honour for a city that prides itself on never sleeping, but also a logistical necessity. With over 6,400 subway cars in operation and 472 stations spread across 36 lines, it’s simply too massive to shut down at night. There isn’t enough space in the system’s rail yards to store all the trains, so they keep rolling, even when most of the city is asleep.
Globally, the NYC subway ranks as one of the largest and busiest transit systems, rivalled only by the likes of Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai. It moves millions of riders daily, and thanks to its sprawling network and integration with an extensive bus system, it’s surprisingly resilient. When a section of track needs repair, rerouting is often seamless. New Yorkers have grown accustomed to detours, shuttle buses, and “planned work” announcements that sound suspiciously like apologies. But the system’s interconnectedness means that even with a few hiccups, the city keeps moving.
Still, the wear and tear is undeniable when you never hit pause. Maintenance crews scramble during off-peak hours to patch up aging infrastructure, some of it over a century old. Signal failures, track fires, and mysterious delays are part of the daily commute, as the MetroCard swipe, which is, by the way, set to retire in 2026.
2. Infrastructure on Life Support.
The NYC subway is a century-old marvel - and it definitely shows. Much of the system dates back to the early 1900s, and while the city has grown up around it, the infrastructure has struggled to keep up. Crumbling stations, water-damaged ceilings, and ancient signal systems are more than just aesthetic eye sores. They’re daily obstacles for millions of riders.
The signals, many of which still rely on pre-WWII technology, are a frequent cause of delays. A single malfunction can ripple across multiple lines, turning a 20-minute commute into a 90-minute expedition. The current signalling system doesn’t actually “know” where a train is: it only knows when a train has passed a certain point, and uses fixed blocks of track to keep trains spaced apart. It’s like driving blindfolded and relying on road bumps to guess where the car ahead is.
The Communications-Based Train Control - or CBTC for short - is a game changer that is used in modern metro systems across the globe. It uses continuous, real-time communication between trains and trackside equipment to pinpoint each train’s exact location. This allows trains to run closer together safely, increase frequency, and reduce delays. In short, CBTC bridges the gaps - literally and figuratively- that the old system can’t. CBTC is where a big chunk of the modernization budget is currently being invested.
While the MTA has launched modernization efforts, such as digital countdown clocks and contactless OMNY payments, I feel like these upgrades are like putting a fresh coat of paint on a building with a cracked foundation.
The New York City subway system, once a global model of urban transit expansion, has seen remarkably little growth in recent decades. Despite the city's increasing population and transit needs, major extensions have been few and far between. The most notable recent projects include the Hudson Yards extension of the 7 train, completed in 2015, and Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway, which opened in 2017. This marked the first significant expansion in over 50 years.
These two projects were dubbed as transformative, especially the Second Avenue line, which had been promised for nearly a century. However, progress on Phase 2, which would extend the Q train north to 125th Street in East Harlem, has hit a big political roadblock. In October 2025, the current administration froze nearly $18 billion in federal infrastructure funding, including money set aside for the Second Avenue Subway extension. Officials cited concerns over “unconstitutional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles” in New York’s contracting practices. So sad.
3. The Great Equalizer - or Is It?
For decades, the NYC subway has been dubbed the great equalizer. From the very beginning, the subway builders refused to build separate first-class cars for wealthy passengers, as did London and Paris. The system was built for the city of immigrants, by the immigrants, and would remain as such.
Today, hedge fund managers, movie stars, students, and blue-collar workers all cram into the same car: shoulder to shoulder, headphones in, eyes on the floor. It’s one of the few places in the city where status does not matter.
But this has not always been like that. After years of neglect and underfunding, the NYC subway began its steep decline, and dragged the whole city with it.
In the 1970s and 1980s, crime in the NYC subway system surged dramatically, with thousands of robberies, unrestrained vandalism, and even brutal murders. Subway’s infrastructure deteriorated so severely that trains derailed, motors fell off, cars caught fire, and deadly accidents occurred. One of the worst accidents happened when a massive 20-ton slab of concrete collapsed onto a 7 train beneath East 42nd Street. It killed one person, injured ten others, and trapped over 1,000 passengers in a smoky hell-hole tunnel for over an hour.
In 1982, Paul Theroux wrote his famous “Subway Odyssey,” published in the New York Times Magazine: “The subway is frightful looking. It has paint and signatures all over its aged face. It has been vandalized from end to end. It smells so hideous you want to put a clothespin on your nose, and it's so noisy the sound actually hurts… It is a gift to any connoisseur of dubious superlatives: it has the filthiest trains, the most bizarre graffiti, the noisiest wheels, the craziest passengers, the most macabre crimes… People waiting for the bus have a special pitying gaze for people entering the dark hole in the sidewalk that is the subway entrance. It is sometimes not pity but fear; often they look like miners’ wives watching their menfolk going down the pit”.
As crime and economic decline drove many middle-class residents out of New York City, reviving the subway’s crumbling infrastructure - its trains, tracks, signals, and stations - after years of neglect demanded huge political will, exceptional effort, and lots, lots of money, which fortunately began to materialize in the mid-1980s.
The city started with graffiti. A massive cleanup campaign involved new cleaning protocols, increased security, and the introduction of graffiti-resistant train surfaces. The central idea was the "broken windows" theory that suggests that visible signs of minor disorder, like vandalism and littering, can lead to an increase in more serious crime by creating an environment where people believe that no one cares. By the early 1990s, the subway was declared “graffiti-free”, a victory that marked a tectonic shift from chaos to control, not just in the subway, but in the whole city. The two pictures below are from The National Museum of African American History and Culture.
4. The Engineering Marvel Well Ahead of Its Time.
The NYC subway wasn’t just built - it was carved. The original construction method, known as cut-and-cover, involved digging massive trenches along city streets, laying track, and then covering it back up. That’s why so many stations sit just a few feet below the surface, with metal columns often awkwardly placed between tracks and platforms. It’s not elegant, but it was fast and cost-effective for the early 1900s.
Reinforced concrete was a very new building material at the time, and it was quickly adopted in the NYC subway. This drew criticism from the bricklayers and masons’ union, who threatened to strike unless its use was restricted.
Above ground, the elevated lines, especially in Queens and the Bronx, still divide the neighbourhoods like scars. While these structures were cheaper to build and easier to maintain, they cast long shadows, quite literally, over the communities they serve.
One of the most forward-thinking and proud features of the NYC subway is its express track, that were built into the original design as early as 1904. While some cities added express service decades later, New York planned for congestion from the start. I think it’s a rare example of long-term thinking in a system that often feels haunted by problems.
Although the slogan of “Fifteen Minutes to Harlem” didn’t fully materialize, the system came very close: passengers could travel from City Hall to 135th Street in about 20 minutes.
To reduce labour cost, sensors were installed on each subway car door to automatically reopen if they detected a passenger being caught. To demonstrate how this safety mechanism worked, a very brave subway executive even placed his nose between the doors! Needless to say that this innovation helped eliminate the need to have a guard in every car.
5. The Subway as a Cultural Canvas.
The NYC subway isn’t just a transit system - it’s a cultural icon. It’s been immortalized in hundreds of movies, music, literature, and street photography. Think Spider-Man, Batman, Joker, and so many others. Even when a movie about New York is shot in a different city (Toronto or Vancouver, for example), a subway entrance is brought along. It’s a gritty and unmistakable sign of New York.
We already talked about how, in the 1970s and 1980s, the NYC subway became a canvas for a different kind of art: graffiti. Entire train cars were covered in wild tags, lettering, and murals that turned the system into a moving gallery of rebellion. While some saw it as vandalism, others viewed it as a raw urban expression that gave birth to the international movement.
But beneath the filth and graffiti lies an underground art gallery. The MTA’s Arts & Design program has installed over 300 permanent artworks across the system: from mosaics and sculptures to digital installations and even music. The famous subway tiles, once purely functional, now serve as canvases for storytelling. My all-time favourite was the large-scale portraits created by late Chuck Close at 86th Street Station including two self-portraits.
And the signage? That clean, modern Helvetica font, introduced by Massimo Vignelli in the 1970s, is as much a part of the city’s visual identity as the NYC skyline itself.
This commitment to beauty isn’t accidental. The original contract with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) stated: “All parts of the structure where exposed to public sight shall be designed, constructed, and maintained with a view through the beauty of their appearances as well as their efficiencies.”
And then there’s the Old City Hall station - a ghost of grandeur beneath the streets. Closed in 1945 due to curved platforms incompatible with newer trains, it remains one of the most beautiful stations ever built anywhere. With its vaulted tile ceilings, brass chandeliers, and stained glass skylights, it’s a time capsule of early 20th-century optimism. You can still glimpse it today: stay on the 6 train as it loops back from the Brooklyn Bridge. Or take part in a guided tour that is organized by the MTA a few times per year. The two pictures below are from The New York Transit Museum.
Conclusion: A Love-Hate Relationship That Endures.
The NYC subway is a paradox of brilliance and breakdown, elegance and filth, history and hustle, in equal parts. It’s a system that was ahead of its time in engineering, and still remains a living museum of urban culture. It frustrates, fascinates, and fuels the city it serves. Whether you’re tapping into a virtual OMNY card on your phone or holding a pole on a packed rush-hour train, you’re part of something bigger: a lifeblood that bursts with the energy of eight million lives. And that’s exactly what makes it so New York.
My other posts about the metro systems in the world:
North America
Europe
Asia
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