About 15 angry straphangers whose subway horror stories are part of a new book gathered in front of Gov. Cuomo’s office in Manhattan on Sunday to call for more state funding for the MTA.
Protester Tolami Adeboye, 38, a G train rider from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, said subway overcrowding is just ghastly and that it’s often impossible to hear announcements.
“I get a subway horror story every time I meet my friends,” she said. “It is just overcrowded to the point when it becomes a problem. I like my fellow New Yorkers, but I don’t need to be that close to them.”
Adeboye and the others are among 65 riders whose tales were included in a new tome by the advocacy group The Riders Alliance.
“I have a daily horror story of fearing that we are going back to the days of the ’70s and the ’80,” lamented Bonnie Nelson, 63, of the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.
The tales of woe range from a woman who broke her calf bone on the Lexington Avenue line when a rider shoved her from a 6 train onto a platform to an intervention by a cop to protect a station agent when an R train was over a half hour late.
The MTA is facing a $14 billion deficit in its capital plan, which includes big projects such the Second Avenue Subway and bringing the LIRR to Grand Central.
The Riders Alliance said it plans to bring copies of the book to Cuomo’s office in Albany and also send them to every state legislator.