August 23, 2006

Duo hopes to ride entire NYC subway in record time

There are 468 stations in the New York City subway system.

Matt Green and Don Badaczewski plan to see them all, within the next 24 hours.

The duo set out this morning, at the little-used S shuttle on Broad Channel, in hopes of breaking what appears to be the standing record of 25 hours, 11 minutes.

They will do it all on one $2 MetroCard (each,) never once exiting the turnstiles until they finish at Pelham Bay Park. Although Green said by e-mail yesterday that they're considering taking a "victory lap" down to City Hall and possibly through the abandoned old City Hall station where the 6 train loops from the end to the beginning of the line.

The provisions include maps, beef jerkey and water. They will be documenting the trip and updating their progress via outgoing voicemail that can be heard here: (718) 407-4697.

"We are indeed taking a camera, as well as a bountiful supply of batteries," Grem said via e-mail yesterday. "But if we run out of batteries, we figure it will only be a matter of minutes before a battery salesman enters our subway car and we will be able to replenish our supply."

Green is a transportation engineer in Manhattan who has lived in Brooklyn for a year. Badaczewski is a law student at the University of Michigan but has spent two summers in NYC. They have, of course, meticulously planned out a route in advance

Their blog set up for the event includes an entry about "the illustrious history of subway riding":

It appears that the first person to attempt to ride the entire subway in one shot was a fellow named Herman Rinke, who made his attempt in 1940, shortly before the IRT, BMT, and IND systems were all unified under city control. If those acronyms are completely alien to you, the Wikipedia has a good article on the NYC subway and its history.

Then in the mid 60s, several computer science students from MIT ushered in the golden age of subway riding. Spurred on by a note on a 1966 subway map about a "Flushing youth" riding all the lines on a single token in 1957, they decided to bring this glorious challenge into the modern age, writing a computer program to determine the most efficient route through the system. It is said that dozens of competitors during this decade took on the challenge, each group trying to one-up the last.

Sadly, though, since the fabled days of the 1960s, endurance subway riding has largely fallen out of favor, taken up only by portly men with social anxiety problems and poor complexions. That's where we come in. The record we are trying to break was set in January 1998 by Mike Falsetta and Salvatore Babones. It took them 25 hours and 11 minutes to pass through every station, without exiting the system.

There is actually a Guinness record for subway riding, but it allows the rider to exit the system, using a bus or other means of transport to go from the end of one spur line to another, before re-entering the subway. We have a strong philosophical opposition to this set of rules. If you're going to spend that much time in pursuit of such a ridiculous and pointless goal, why cut corners? Plus, what kind of babes are going to dig guys who take the easy way out of such a manly challenge?

Our definition of riding the whole subway, defined as a "Class C" attempt here: http://www.gricer.com/anysrc/anysrc.html is that we have to go through every station, but not necessarily stop at them all. So Cortlandt on the R, for example, we will pass through even though it's closed for repairs. So nothing should prevent us from completing this attempt. Even if there is an unexpected service disruption that makes it impossible to break the record, we'll keep going, even if it takes 30 hours or more.

August 23, 2006 08:23 AM in Cheap Stuff, Transportology

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