My Journey to the Express Train

I think I have spent a quarter of my time in New York City on the subway. When I first came to the city, for the CityGAP Program with Living City Project, I liked the 6 local trains. It took me to FOUND, at 51st Street and Lexington, where we had most of our classes. On Wednesdays, I went to La Morada in the South Bronx to volunteer for a few hours, and fortunately the 6 train went to a nearby station there as well.

I hated changing trains because every time I entered a new station, it felt like entering a new world, and it was. So the 6 was perfect for me, and I stayed loyal to it even though it stopped at every station. Had I switched to the 4 or 5 express trains, I probably could have saved some time, but I still could not fully differentiate between the local and express trains. So I spent an extra ten minutes getting somewhere on a familiar route rather than switching trains.

But New York didn't let me avoid learning forever.

On Saturdays, I went to 34th Avenue Open Street in Queens for bicycle rides. I could no longer rely on just one train. I took the 6 to Grand Central and switched to the 7. On weekends, I took whichever of the 1, 2, or 3 arrived first to Penn Station and then switched to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to visit my aunt’s family in Long Island.

I started slow. I began switching trains here and there, while still heavily relying on Google Maps to navigate and sticking mostly to local trains. I can be stubborn.

But I had to hasten my learning process when I moved to the Bronx for the last month of the semester. Only one line went to where I lived, and I had to take it all the way to 242nd Street–Van Cortlandt Park and then walk another fifteen minutes. To get to FOUND, I had to switch between three trains every day, turning my commute into an hour and fifteen minutes each way.

Most people would think that living in the Bronx would make it easier for me to travel to the South Bronx, but the opposite was true. It took me nearly one hour and forty minutes to travel from one side of the Bronx to the other, longer than getting to the South Bronx from Lower Manhattan, which took around forty minutes. I realized that it is often easier to travel into Manhattan from any borough than to travel between neighborhoods within the same borough, because most train lines were historically built to run through Manhattan, making cross-borough connections limited. I often had to go all the way back through Manhattan and then uptown again to get to the other side of the Bronx.

By the end of that semester, I still was not fluent in the subway system, but I could navigate almost anywhere with enough patience and Google Maps. To my surprise, I never once took a taxi. I did not even have Uber on my phone.

Then I went back to Nepal for two months, where there were no trains to navigate.

When I came back for another semester, I dragged my huge suitcase from Penn Station (LIRR) to the Upper West Side on a 2 express train by myself.

I started taking the 2 or 3 express train from 96th Street to Wall Street for work several days a week. The ride takes around twenty-four minutes; on the 1 train it would take nearly forty because it stops at every station. That is how I became fluent in express trains.

Ironically, local trains that once comforted me now test my patience. Whenever there are delays on the 2 or 3, I get annoyed at having to take the 1 instead.

I have taken the A train to Far Rockaway with beautiful views of the beach, but there are always delays. I have taken the L to Williamsburg, the G to Prospect Park, and the B and D on a few occasions, but I still don’t know their stops. I can, however, look at a subway map in any station and tell where I can switch trains and where I am at that moment. I do not solely rely on Google Maps, and when my phone is about to die, I am very grateful for that skill. I am confident now that I can navigate most places without having to peek at my phone every few minutes. This newfound confidence makes me feel more independent and connected to the city.

Each subway line I have taken has a different story to tell. Each accommodates people with different colors of skin, each has a number of languages spoken on it, and the smell in the air changes from perfumes to flowers to food to sweat to piss. The styles of clothing vary too. I noticed the shift in diversity of commuters at each station and in the neighborhoods they exist in during my journey from local to express.

Sometimes, taking the 6, I would watch finance bros get on and off the train from 23rd Street to Midtown, or. taking the 1, I would see an increasing number of unhoused men and unkept subway stations above 125th Street, or taking the 7 train I’d see it hold the Asian diaspora, or taking the 3 train from 96th Street to Wall Street, I watched older professional men and women with established careers and young people who had just started theirs, get off and rush to their offices.

I can go on and on about how each line tells a story, how every person riding from the far tip of the Bronx to Lower Manhattan has different stops and purposes in mind, and how they sometimes meet in the middle, sit shoulder to shoulder, yet share nothing but those quiet moments.

For now, this is my story of learning to switch from the local to the express and navigate the subway city. There are still so many lines I have not taken yet and so many stations that are unfamiliar to me. These were just some of my experiences navigating the subway, centered mostly in Manhattan, and sometimes the Bronx and Queens. I don’t know if I will come back. I may move somewhere else halfway across the world, but I know now that I can safely navigate and return home through the New York City subway, at any time of the day — or night.

Where you live and the train near you dictates how you experience New York City! Here are the most common subway lines I took over a period of eight months in NYC: