MTA Using Subways to Transport Trash: Report

MTA tells paper transporting trash via passenger cars is not agency policy.

If you think city subways are dirty, take a ride on the 6 train late at night.

Transit workers sometimes use in-service subway cars to transport heaping piles of trash to disposal sites, reports the Daily News. An unidentified transit worker told the paper he’s seen dozens of orange garbage bags littering the subway cars late at night as horrified straphangers lift their feet to avoid stepping in the stinky leakage that sometimes spills from the bags.

“I’ve seen stacks of bags, leaking, blocking the doorway, blocking seats,” the anonymous transit worker told the News. “It may be 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in the morning, but this is New York City. There’s always people on the train.”

The MTA told the News using passenger cars to transport garbage is not agency policy and that it has launched an investigation into the matter.

Normally, crews store the trash they pick up off the tracks in “wide areas” located inside the tunnels near the stations, the paper said. But if there is no “wide area” near a particular station, crews often pile the stinking trash bags on in-service trains to transport the garbage to a station that does have a storage area.

Not only is transporting garbage on passenger cars gross, it’s potentially dangerous, Transport Workers Union Local 100 John Samuelsen told the News. The bags have rats in them, he said.

"When track workers walk past those bags, we give them a wide berth, knowing if you walk close to a bag, a rat could jump out right on top of you," Samuelsen told the paper.

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