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.

Broken Machines

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.

Pelted by Burrito

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.

"That's human nature," said Bronzaft, who specializes in noise and stress. "People habitually do the same things over and over again. We are creatures of habit."

"People automatically stand in the same spot on the subway platform," she said. "My students in class always sit in the same seats, even when they are not designated."

In 1979, Bronzaft's research showed that people get flustered when presented with a disruption. She found that some people can precisely navigate a daily route, but when the rhythm is broken, they are helpless.

They miss their morning cup of coffee, can't find another train line, arrive late for work or not at all and miss scheduled appointments.

"When we did the study on the subway maps, we asked students if they could take a trip to a particular destination," said Bronzaft. "They knew how to do their own trips and knew how to get to the theater, but when they had to do something different they had difficulty."

"People get very stressed out because they haven't prepared an alternate route," she said.

In New York City today, Erica Policow ended up walking one hour to her job as a food editor at Quick and Simple magazine.

The 24-year-old tried to take the subway from uptown, but trains were so full commuters were pouring back out of the entrances. She tried to catch a bus, but they were so packed, they drove right past the stops.

"On my way I saw a couple of people that were clearly upset and berating a police officer," she said. "It was ridiculous what they were doing."

Ray Micek, an assistant vice president at New York Life, left his Brooklyn co-op apartment at 6:45 a.m. amid tornado warnings. The usual 50-minute commute took close to three hours.

"I have a fairly set routine," said Micek, 52. "I am out of the door around the same time and always at work before 8 o'clock. In a way, it was a change of pace, and I can't say my whole day was ruined."

Poised Under Pressure

People react to emotional pressure on a continuum, according to Michael Mercer, an Illinois industrial psychologist. His company, the Mercer Group, has researched and developed tests for employers to judge the way potential employees react to stress.

Most people are somewhere in the middle between falling apart or being "poised under pressure," he said. Those who adapt to stress and challenges by taking responsibility for themselves are more successful in their careers and personal lives.

Those who have a "subjective" reaction "love to complain, blame and moan," according to Mercer. "They always have one more excuse because they don't take responsibility for their own lives."

Mercer compares the weather-related transit delay to other natural disasters when residents have been warned.

"In big hurricanes there are people who board up their houses and leave and there are others who stay in their dwellings and then they drown and blame the government for not saving them. But they didn't bother to pick up and leave town."

Those who have an "objective" reaction "pick up and move ahead like a mature adult," according to Mercer.

"One of the worst things you can do for your well-being is blame society or culture because you cannot do anything about it. You have to get to work or get fired."

New Yorkers may grumble, but some find ways to find the positive amid the chaos.

At 11 a.m. today business writer Mark McSherry was stranded inside a stalled Manhattan-bound subway. He had left his Brooklyn home two hours earlier, walking much of the way.

"It's hell," McSherry, 43, said from his cell phone on the train. "I've got a lunch with a banker and I have no idea how I am going to make it. It's just crap, you know."

In the end, the trek took three hours and 45 minutes and he missed his noon interview. But McSherry, who likes to run marathons, relished at least one part the hectic commute.

"It was a nightmare and I was really angry when I started out," McSherry said, after walking five of the nine-mile trek to his office. "The sun was shining in the park ? how can you stay angry?"