New York Subways Are Ugly, According To Straphangers Campaign

Ugly indeed! A survey conducted by the Straphangers Campaign has uncovered a wide range of conditions that include 79 percent of platforms found with significant paint peeling garnering the State of Subway Platforms "the ugly" stink of disapproval.

Platforms qualified as either "bad" or "ugly" if specific conditions were observed at least 50 percent of the time. Along with peeling paint, other "ugly" conditions included broken lighting and substantial water damage.

From July to September, the campaign employed 14 interns and staff members venturing out to 250 station platforms, 28 percent of all platforms in the city, at 120 randomly selected stations.

Thankfully not everything down below was aghast. The campaign surprisingly found no stations with overflowing garbage, a vastly different portrait of the subway's garbage dilemma which Transit President Thomas Prendergast called "unacceptable" last summer.

Organizer Jason Chin-Fatt discussed the results:

We found the good, the bad and the ugly, from no subway station platforms having overflowing garbage cans to clearly unacceptable conditions, such as peeling paint at three quarters of the platforms observed

Alas, most of the Straphangers Campaign's findings were based on physical appearances. You can dig deeper and measure how your subway station is feeling with HappyStance's techy app to see if appearances match their current sentiments.