Hampton Subway Newsletter: Week of Feb 23 – Mar 2, 2013

Riders this past week: 8,456

Rider miles this past week: 71,862

Down in the Tube

Singers Paul Simon and Edie Brickell sitting side-by-side on the subway between Amagansett and Napeague. Playwright Edward Albee was seen on the subway between Napeague and Amagansett, going the other way.

Ridership Rebounds

After last week’s record low ridership numbers, Commissioner Aspinall called an emergency meeting of the Board of Directors to discuss the situation. There was fear that if this low ridership continued, Hamptons Subway might have to institute a policy of not replacing employees who retire or, worse, firing people unceremoniously in reverse order of when they signed on. If that didn’t help, then it was possible the subway system would have to consider bankruptcy. Cooler heads prevailed when a closer look at the one-week drop-off revealed that it coincided with the big snowstorm that kept everybody housebound for four days. The fact that the ridership rebounded dramatically this week proved that this was so. What a relief.

Hostile Takeover Concerns

After discussing the faltering ridership at that meeting, the Board was informed by its accountants that a hostile bid to take over Hamptons Subway was filed with the SEC by the Heinz Family Trust of Pittsburgh, the former owners of the Heinz Ketchup company who recently came into a lot of money they don’t know what to do with. The Subway Board put together a committee to create poison pills and golden parachutes in the hopes that one or the other might cause Heinz to slip on its ketchup.

Unused Trackage

In the back of a storeroom alongside a subway tunnel halfway between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor, an old door was opened after all these years to reveal trackage down an old subway tunnel that, when followed, led to a terminus at Northwest, an old town on Gardiners Bay now just a group of broken foundations of those long ago homes. The Commissioner is thinking of what we might do with this trackage to nowhere in the coming years. If you have any suggestions, just drop them in any of the suggestion boxes on any one of the platforms.

Escalator Speedup Halted

At 2:35 p.m. on Wednesday, the “up” escalator that leads from the Water Mill platform to the street unexpectedly speeded up to double its normal speed. Numerous straphangers, not expecting this, took falls on the sidewalk at the end of the ride, but no one was seriously injured. The double-speed runaway subway escalator slowed down to regular speed at 2:58 p.m. Engineers are trying to find out why.

Happy Birthday

Frank Moses, our popular Personnel Manager, turned 49 last Tuesday and blew out all 49 candles with one puff on his cake in the company cafeteria at lunchtime. Hamptons Subway celebrates all staff member birthdays and puts exactly the number of candles on the cake to coincide with their age, except for Zeke Hicks, our maintenance man, who just turned 92.

Commissioner Aspinall’s Message

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade is coming up in Montauk next month and we are already busy with plans to entice partygoers headed for the parade onto our subway cars for the trip from Westhampton. (Our stop in Montauk is right at the railroad station.) A kazoo, a sparkler and a funny green hat will be given to all riders who head east from our Westhampton station that morning whether they want it or not.