Next stop: the history books!
A Brooklyn transit buff took off this afternoon from Penn Station in what she hopes will be a record-breaking trip through the entire New York City subway system.
Stefanie Gray, 24, is trying to traverse the entire system in under 22 hours, 52 minutes, and 36 seconds with her unlimited ride MetroCard.
“This has been crazy stressful,” said Gray. She was tweaking her route up until this morning because of service changes.
Even after the change, she still ended up being delayed for the start of her trip because the 1 train was operating on 3 line track.
She began the trip by taking the 1 train to South Ferry. Then she got off and walked to the R train at Whitehall Street, which she took to Jay Street/MetroTech in Brooklyn. From there she took the A train back to Manhattan to Canal. Then she switched to the downtown E train to World Trade Center.
Her plan involves going borough by borough, focusing on Lower Manhattan today.
She hopes to finish at the Brooklyn Bridge 6 train stop around this time tomorrow.
“But it will be contingent on a lot of things,” she said.
The record she’s trying to break was set in 2009.
It might have been easier to accomplish then.
After that, the MTA drastically cut service and eliminated two subway lines — the V and the W — due to serious budget cuts.
Gray planned her trip to draw attention to the MTA’s fiscal problems and petition Albany for more funding.
Transportation Alternatives — the mass transit advocacy group where Gray is a campaign coordinator — will follow her journey on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag “#stopthefarehike.” It is also collecting signatures protesting the hikes at StopTheFareHike.Org. The signatures will be taken to Gov. Cuomo. The group has collected over 16,000 so far. It hopes to collect 50,000.
The Guinness Book of World Records requires her to take trains that have doors open at every stop, meaning she can’t zip past stations on an express train and count that on her trip.
She can use express trains to double back on the journey. She can also use buses.
In addition to navigating skip-stop service and service interruptions, she must also deal with the MTA’s FASTRACK repair program, which shuts down the A/C/E lines from Midtown to Brooklyn tonight through Thursday from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
“I was a little miffed when I heard about it [FASTRACK],” she said.
Gray — who is going with a group of women volunteers — is also worried about bathroom trips.
“It doesn’t help that we’re all women,” she said.