New York's Subway Delays Toss Routines Into Chaos

Aug. 8, 2007 — -- Don't take the A train, at least when it rains.

Disruption was the order of the day when a fist fight broke out on the storied New York City subway line Wednesday as hot and thirsty riders waited hours to get through rail tunnels flooded with torrential rains.

"We were all jammed in when the train got stalled," one commuter said. "At the other end of the train someone screamed, 'If you don't back off I'll kill you.'"

Commuters were forced out into the streets and into taxies and buses. The few subway cars available were crammed with passengers and, in many cases, tempers flared.

Even for New Yorkers, who are used to closures and curve balls in their routines, it was a very bad day.

The commuting mess -- the second this summer, after a midtown steam pipe explosion -- was no terrorist attack or natural disaster. It was just one of the mundane disruptions that can cause carefully choreographed routines to disintegrate.

But it also illustrated the ways in which Americans depend upon their routines to trudge through life.

Debby Kusich, a salesperson for a San Francisco wireless company, is still simmering because the stomach machine at her health club was broken this week.

"I have a routine when I go to work out," said Kusich, 55. "I do the treadmill for 25 minutes and then go into the weight room and use the stomach machine. I had finished running and my machine was broken."

"Instead of trying something else, I left," she said. "And I yelled at the lady going out. It wasn't her fault, but I was so pissed that I didn't do a full workout."

Just north of Los Angeles, outrage has reached fever pitch as construction slows traffic on a stretch of Highway 138. Some commuters are so angry they're attacking the construction crews.

"I have actually had someone throw a socket at me, and actually hit my car," road worker Robert Bartlett told The Associated Press.

Think that's bad? One worker was pelted with a burrito, and another was shot with a BB gun.

Routine busters paralyze most people, according to Arline Bronzaft, a New York City psychologist who wrote a 1974 paper, "Orientation on the Subway System," and who helped design the city's subway map 28 years ago.