Transportations of 14th Street

Honee Jang

HMS 103A

Professor Sacha Frey

12/14/2011

Transportations of 14^th Street- replace it with my central point in terms of mapping

“Why do buses go from this place to that? Who chooses the routes and by what criteria?” (Perec 52)

 Manhattan was cold and drizzling with rain on Wednesday, December 7th.  Regardless of the public nuisance of weather, many people on 14th street were traveling along the street around 10 am in the morning. I traveled among them, from 1st avenue to 8th, back eastbound to Avenue C, and then back again to westbound, with two different modes of transportation. On my hand were two Manhattan maps; one subway map, and the other a bus map. On 14^th street, both map showed a train, L, and two buses, 14A and 14D, traveling between west and east aides of Manhattan. The L train’s route is marked by a gray line that horizontally connects two white dots and three black dots along the 14^th street. The 14 A/D buses are marked by one single yellow-green line with arrows, showing the direction of the buses. The stations are not specified on the bus map. The two routes fit in perfectly without distracting the crème color, gridded landscape of New York City. Although it gives clear direction of where the two transportations are leading me, the map is too “authoritarian, simplistic, erroneous and coercive” the street because___. I did not get a sense of the actual neighborhood until I explored the street on foot.

Walkers, 

 Even when you are used to the route, the map is still ambiguous and abstract that it is not recognizable in the actual space. It shows the destinations of the transportation but not the process of movement, about how our body experiences the transportation system, and where we actually are. After all, the routes are hypothetical that gives only the generalized area where people might land on. The white dots for bigger station and black dots for small station are excellent possibilities to show the general movement, but they are only hypothesis, not statistics. It needs more explanation. I wanted to provide a more insightful map that shows interaction between the subway and the individuals. A more-present location based factors, such as the space in transportation, the actual bodies who travel, and the connection we make instead with the transportation. Perec asks us to observe the surroundings “…until the scene becomes improbable. Until you have the impression, for the briefest of moments, that you are in a strange town or, better still, until you can no longer understand what is happening or is not happening, until the whole place becomes strange, and you no longer even know that this is what is called a town, a street, buildings, pavements…” (Perec, 53) In the drift of the rush and the passive surroundings, I stripped down our body's use of space, and discovered that the transportation restricts body by limiting our bodily sense and space in the process of expansion.

De Certeau describes the walkers of the city as the wanderers who use their bodies to "write" their experience of the city. Although they do not know they are writing, but the "paths that correspond in this intertwining, unrecognized poemsin which each body is an element signed by many others, elude legibility." I'd like to further explain my thesis by employing the walkers as the central theme. 

There is almost no one at the bus stop on C Avenue. I stand inside the transparent shelter, looking around the buildings and the trees. Until the bus comes, I am not allowed to leave my spot. The small bus station is all I have. I walk few steps inside the shelter, making ellipses with my footstep. When the bus arrives, I swipe my metro card and get on the one-passenger-entry door. Few others behind me get on one by one. I am still not fully awake from the rush in the subway. A while ago, I was at Lorimer station, on the way to Manhattan. The crowd filled in the narrow space of platform. In there, I was in one-dimensional world where I just go forward. The crowd kept walking without a glance, swept down by the mass. I could not possibly get off of the forceful drift, the moving walkway.

In a subway station, the riders have to expand. The crowd starts from dots down the platform, unevenly spacing out between each other, leaving ample room of personal space. As more crowds come in, they fill in between the dots and extend the dots into line. After the complete formation of a line, another line forms another set of dots. If each crowd were to be divided into first, second, and third groups and have their own colors, the aerial view of the crowd would form a seemingly randomized pattern that is a uniform distribution, an arrangement of order made by the prior ones who came to platform. People follow this absurd distribution as though they know how it works.

                Later I find out, this order allows chronological entry to the subway. The mass hurriedly disperses into the subway. The subway’s population is not in uniform but in clump distribution. The benches, especially the side and right in the middle are the most popular spots. Then it’s the bars. More than two riders claim the bar and grab it, never letting go until they reach their destination or find a seat. From the platform to subway, this pattern of population distribution in small space is what every subwayers must be accustomed to. In the restricted space of bus stop, bus entrance, platform, and the subway, we learn the order of crowd.

Once you get on the transportation, it is all about senses now. The subwayers are more attuned to the sound than anything else. The sound of the train leaving, stopping, the announcement for next stops… especially when it’s crowded and you can’t see the platforms passing by, all your senses focus to auditory. We depend solely on the metal container to transport us, giving all the control to it. The subwayers are indifferent about such authoritative decision, because once you are used to the pattern of sound, your body moves on its own. It knows where your stop is, after the third long sigh of the train at this moment. Without even registering your movement to your brain, your feet lead you out of the metal container, drifting in what is a pre-destined routine.

On the other hand, the bus requires more attention to the visual aspect of the street. Usually it is the local Manhattan residents who use buses around 10 am on Wednesday morning of December the 7^th. None of the passengers looked around to see where they were because they were familiar with the street’s neighborhood. They recognize the bus route by perception of the landscape, not by the avenue names. They know more or less factual but truthful part of the street. More factual because they know the distance it takes to get to this precise intersection and they are experiencing the visual aspect of the city which was lacking in the subway. However they might be less factual in getting down the exact names of the streets or gets to the statistical part, such as the number of crowds coming at this certain time, because bus parts the crowd into smaller groups (frequent and dispersed stops). which emphasizes only on names and sequences of avenues.

There’s a slight fear to the subwayers, especially when they are new to the train. Corner introduces the definition of “drifting” in his essay, Agency of Mapping. “Drift” means___. And I defined it further into ___. They drift, not sure if the train is going to the way they want. There are no street signs that show the train is going west or east, and we cannot look out to see which direction we are going. It’s just an act of trusting and confirming. What seems forever between Bedford to and 1^st avenue gets a little better after passing 1^st avenue. Now, the stops are not far from each other and the avenue numbers only increase. On 3^rd and 6^th avenue, no one from my section gets off. 4/5 of the mass gets off at Union Square, and the rest gets off on 8^th avenue. On the last stop, as if to caution not to rush, the doors take some time before opening the door. I get off with the rest of subwayers. I follow and see almost all goes to A/C/E station. I notice 8^th avenue is only the mediator. I also notice that from 1^st to 8^th, no one gets onto my section of the subway. L is only the giver than the accepter in the subway system. From Union Square, 6th, and 8^th Avenue where L intersects with 4, 5, 6, R, N, Q, F, D, B, M, 1, 2, 3, A, C, and E trains, not one other subwayers transfers to L. I learn that 14^th street is the aorta of all other arteries that transport its riders.

The subway is characterized by its closed system. The subwayers are blind to social milieu as much as they are blind spatially in subway. The subway set its importance on the subwayers’ occupation and stops only on the path to legislative structures, service centers, and college. Avenue C to A, and Avenues 9 to beyond are not part of train L’s route. This causes subway’s selection of certain groups such as businessmen, workers, and college student. Likewise, the subwayers are selective about their destinations miss much of what is a part of 14^th street. 

The local residents take 14A or 14D bus instead, because their preferred destination is not work-related but everyday life: groceries, walking, leisure, and meeting with a friend. The stores, restaurants, cafes, and park are all throughout the street. The buses don’t stop at every spot. It is the riders who choose the route, not the bus. However, this is also a disadvantageous to those who are riding the bus for the first time. Because it is our choice to stop the bus, we are obligated to make our own choices, and more often than not, the bus drivers do not announce next stop. First timers should always look ahead and check the street names. Other than the first timers, the rest are relaxed. They would look out the window with dull eyes. They are not rushed by time.

For buses, the crowd begins to build from the far end of the street- avenue C and avenue 10^th. The far ends are where it’s most crowded, regardless of the bus’s direction. The number of bus riders is quite consistent until we reach near Union Square. Union Square is one major stop where the subwayers and the bus riders meet. Other than that stop, the two riders have no relationship to one another, although they share the same route. The two transportations on the map seem they overlap, but in actuality they are separate layers that keep their homogenous riders. There’s not so much relationship between 14 bus and other subways that cross 14^th street either. The 14 bus is not a mediator, but the main stream.    

14^th street mediates and guides the expansion of the passers through two transportations. Although their functions are different and they serve different social classes and direct to different destinations within similar stops, the bodily and spatial restrictions allow expansion of the movement. Without understanding much of what is going on, we follow our path by the ritual of spatial distribution, use of our sensory system, and drifting and expanding our space. “Ideas about spatiality are moving away from physical objects and forms towards the variety of territorial… and social process that flow through space.”(Corner 227) 

transportation trip