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NEW
YORK CITY SUBWAY
The New York
City Subway is designed for carrying large numbers of people during
working days. A typical subway station has waiting platforms ranging
from 400 to 700 feet long to accommodate large numbers of people.
Passengers enter a subway station through stairs towards station
booths and vending machines to buy their fare, currently the MetroCard.
After swiping at a turnstile, customers walk down to the waiting
platforms below. Some subway lines in the outer boroughs have elevated
tracks with stations that passengers climb up to.
In some stations
two separate platforms for the same subway line exist, since some
subway lines have both local and express lines on the same tracks.
Express lines have subway trains that pick up and unload passengers
at specific stations, particularly transfer stations (special stations
where passngers can walk from one line to another for free), while
skipping less frequently used local stations.
A typical subway
train has from 8 to 12 cars (shuttles as short as 2), when put together
the train can range from 400 to 650 feet long. As a general rule
the IRT trains are shorter and narrower than the IND/BMT trains,
the result being that each line uses different types of subway cars.
Between 1985 and 1989 some trains on the IRT lines were painted
red, giving them the name redbirds. Most of them were replaced by
new, more modern subway trains between 2000 and 2004.
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