Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of July 29 – August 5, 2016
Week of July 29 – August 5, 2016
Riders this past week: 21,413
Rider miles this past week: 171,423
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Actor Richard Gere was seen with Matt Lauer on the subway heading to Sag Harbor from Noyac on Thursday. Madonna was seen with Jon Stewart traveling from East Hampton to Amagansett on Friday. Stewart was sporting a beard.
NEW FEES
The new fee schedule is causing problems. Since last Monday, the cost of a subway card swipe varies with the length of the trip and the time of day, including, when demand is high, a surge price shown as a “multiple” of the regular price. Complaints since last week have been higher by a multiple of 1.8. Most people want the old standard of $2.50 a ride re-instated.
ALL ABOARD TO GURNEYS
On Saturday July 30 at 4 p.m. the special Dan’s Papers ClambakeMTK Train picked up passengers in Westhampton Beach going eastbound to Montauk. Chef Marc Murphy of the Food Network show Chopped and Eden Grinshpan, the TV personality (Eden Eats and Log On and Eat with Eden Grinshpan) and cook, co-hosted Dan’s ClambakeMTK at Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa and handed out mini lobster rolls to all passengers on that trip. Hamptons Subway hosted this special train without extra charge as our tribute to Dan’s Papers for all the help they’ve given us publishing our weekly newsletter in their pages for the last five years.
DELAY IN QUOGUE
A series of antique subway cars, the original cars used when the Hamptons Subway went into business in 1927, are stored in a shed at the end of the line at the Montauk Yards, and last Wednesday, some of our maintenance people cranked one up and got it going, and then drove it out onto the tracks at 4 a.m. in the morning, two hours before the subway system opens for the day, to see if it could still cut the mustard and go once around the subway system.
It couldn’t.
The car came to a halt in the tunnel just to the east of the Quogue station. Though there was still gas in it, the battery had run down, a circumstance anticipated by the original motorman requiring the use of a large steel crank. The crank, inserted in a hole in the grill and turned, made the engine cough, backfire and start up again. Unfortunately, the crank had been left in the Montauk Yards, so one of the maintenance people had to call for the subway maintenance bus to come get them, take them unceremoniously back to Montauk to get the crank and return. The two-hour delay on the system followed.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
Why didn’t they just have the maintenance bus people BRING the crank?
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