The Second Avenue Subway Is Here!

New Yorkers view their subway system with reproachful pride. We fixate on its virtues and faults, as though the subway lines were our children. We want so much for them, and yet they so often disappoint. When their latest report cards arrived, just after Christmas, the top grades went to the 1 line, the 7, and the L. The goats were the 5 and the A. The A train at least has an anthem, and the vestigial grandeur of connecting old Harlem to Bed-Stuy. The 5, ode-less, has passengers massed five deep on the platform, with herders in fluorescent vests blowing whistles and barking out commands (“Let the people off the train first!”) and riders adding their own gloss (“If you don’t fit, get out the fucking train!”). Along with the 4, it provides express service up and down Lexington Avenue. It also provides the routine rush-hour humiliation of getting stalled between stations as the 6, the Lexington Avenue local, rattles past on a parallel track. The Lex line carries more riders per day—1.3 million—than any other train in the United States. You tend not to look around much on a crowded car, but when you do you will typically see, on faces pointing every which way and often rearing back to avoid backpacks or arms thrusting up toward grab handles, a portraitist’s range of had-it-up-to-here.