This evening, after seeing some theatre in Brooklyn, I entered the subway station at Atlantic Avenue, to catch a train back to Manhattan.
On the platform were a lot more people than I would have expected that time on a Sunday night. This is not a good sign — it generally means trains are delayed and not running as frequently as usual.
There seemed to be a kind of punchy gallows humor among those waiting. I got the feeling some of them had been standing there for quite a while.
Eventually a D train pulled up, but it was clearly labeled as a train to Coney Island (which is further away from Manhattan — the wrong direction). I asked one fellow if he thought it would get me to Manhattan, and he said no, it’s the wrong train.
I looked for a conductor (there’s always one somewhere on the train), but no luck — he or she must have been many cars away. If there was an announcement in the station, none of us heard it.
But the train looked like it was going in the right direction, so I got on. Only one other person nearby seemed to agree with me, a man traveling with his young son. They also got on. We pulled out of the station, our subway car empty but for the three of us, leaving the large crowd standing on the platform.
At the next stop a young woman got on. The stop after that was the first station in Manhattan, whereupon the woman came up to me frantically and said “is this Manhattan?”
“Yes,” I said, “it is.”
At which point she dashed off the train before the doors closed. Clearly she had believed the signage on the train, and had thought she was heading toward Coney Island.
The train took me to the stop near my apartment, and I got home just fine. But I feel bad for all those people who ended up getting on the wrong train, or not getting on the right train. Late at night, when the trains don’t run very often, subway misconnections can be costly.
I wonder whether there is some sort of lesson in all this.