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An Ode to the New York Subway, from Paul Krugman [1]

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Date: 2022-10-25

Paul Krugman has taken time to express his feelings about the New York City Subway System. (The link should allow passage through The NY Times Paywall for the subway tribute.) It’s a bit of a followup to his previous column in which he discusses Crime: Red Delusions About Purple Reality.

There’s no question that Republicans, for lack of anything real to run on, have settled on trying to scare America into voting for them by portraying blue states and blue cities as hellholes of violent crime. It’s certainly working on their base, and who knows how many others.

Sunday I ran into a man who had been to a Zeldin rally, and was pumped about it. (Zeldin is an election-denying Congressman running for governor of NY.) The man was telling me he’s looking to get out of New York City, specifically mentioning the subways. He had impression anyone riding them would be taking their lives in their hands. (Older white guy, not surprisingly.)

Krugman’s previous column mentioned this debate moment:

During last week’s Oklahoma gubernatorial debate Joy Hofmeister, the surprisingly competitive Democratic candidate, addressed Kevin Stitt, the Republican incumbent, who — like many in his party — is running as a champion of law and order. “The fact is the rates of violent crime in Oklahoma are higher under your watch than New York and California,” she declared. Stitt responded by laughing, and turned to the audience: “Oklahomans, do you believe we have higher crime than New York or California?” But Hofmeister was completely correct. In fact, when it comes to homicide, the most reliably measured form of violent crime, it isn’t even close: In 2020 Oklahoma’s murder rate was almost 50 percent higher than California’s, almost double New York’s, and this ranking probably hasn’t changed.

In his ode to the subway system, Krugman takes the crime statistics on, and shows how numbers without context can be deceiving.

So I’m aware that it can seem insensitive to point out that to some extent the focus on subway crime illustrates a point I made in my most recent column: Crime in urban areas, New York City in particular, can seem higher than it is because of high population density, which means that people are more likely to witness a crime than they are in small towns or rural areas. Attacks in subway cars or on subway platforms during rush hour are an extreme example. When I say that we’ve had a record number of murders this year, that number is nine so far, on a system that even postpandemic often carries more than 3.5 million passengers each workday.

But enough with talking of the fear and smear from the GOP. Krugman is celebrating what the subway means for New York City.

There have been frequent debates about how New York’s system compares with those of other large cities, especially London. New York clearly loses on aesthetics: The system is dingy and yes, you do sometimes see rats on the track. It’s also confusing for visitors; at least once a month I find myself explaining to strangers that no, the express train doesn’t stop at Columbus Circle. On the other hand, the New York subway, with its extensive four-track system — which lets it put many local stops close together while allowing easy transfer to fast express trains — is arguably more functional than its counterparts elsewhere. ...Indeed, just commuting on the subway (which I do) brings one into regular, if casual, contact with people of different economic classes and ethnicities, which I consider a social good. Hostility to groups that don’t look or sound like you tends to be highest when you don’t encounter people different from yourself very often. Finally, one of the uplifting aspects of the subway — not a word you often see applied to the system, but I’d stand by it — is that it demands some consideration for other people. I’m talking about minor stuff, like the orderly way passengers file off a crowded subway car at every stop to let other people off, and then get back on. But to ride the subway is to see large numbers of people behaving well, and only a few behaving badly. I, at least, generally emerge from my commute thinking a bit better of humanity.

Read the whole thing — it’s a bit of reassurance that yes, some things can make a difference for the better.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/25/2131299/-An-Ode-to-the-New-York-Subway-from-Paul-Krugman

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