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Rats, there’s nothing to eat here!
The MTA — inundated with complaints about overflowing garbage and nibbling rats on subway platforms — is trashing trash cans at several stations, part of an effort to curtail the massive amounts of rodent-luring rubbish left in the system every day.
It might seem counterintuitive, but New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast said eliminating garbage cans might lead to cleaner stations.
The MTA isn’t hauling all of its trash cans to the curb just yet.
To test the theory, it instituted a pilot program at two very busy stations — the 8th Street Station in the Village, and Flushing/Main Street in Queens.
Although nobody has ever compared Yellowstone to the N train, Prendergast was quick to point out that many parks have a “carry in, carry out” policy, and the Port Authority’s PATH system has had trash-can free stations for more than 10 years.
“That was their approach to the problem,” he said at an Metropolitan Transporation Authority committee meeting yesterday.
“We’re not saying it’s the solution.”
To tell straphangers about the new policy — which has been in effect in the two stations for a few weeks — officials said they handed out fliers and hung posters.
Some straphangers clearly didn’t get the message.
One guy at Main Street dumped his trash into the corner where the can used to be, oblivious to the fact that he’d just littered.
It happens all the time now, said Sunny Pal, a newsstand agent at the Flushing station.
“People are putting the trash where the cans used to be, right outside my store. I have to tell them no, they can’t do it,” said Pal.
“People don’t know where to put it now.,so I see them putting it here, there, everywhere.”
But one cleaner at the station — who asked not to be identified — thought it was having the desired effect.
“People realize they can’t throw away their trash and so they stop bringing it in here,” he said.
Riders leave behind ann astonishing 40 tons of trash every day underground — and getting it out isn’t easy.
The MTA has eight trains that shuffle along to every station between 9 p.m. until just before 6 a.m. daily to haul garbage.
But there’s so much that often, the trains fill up before they finish their routes.
The MTA also has added two new trains to their fleet to clear up trash.
Meanwhile, the agency is s starting a new pilot program to deal with rats.
Officials will partner with the city’s Health Department to boost extermination and vigorously clean the garbage areas with bleach in the most rat-infested stations.
They include West 4th Street, Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall, and 86th Street/Central Park West.