Different 100th Birthday Ideas for the Subway

The Straphangers and Tri-State Transportation Campaign have been collecting collected suggestions for how to celebrate the subway system's 100th anniversary next October. The Daily News has the top ten suggestions:

- Have a special edition Subway M&M's. The A train would be honored, for example, with blue candies with the letter A on their shells.
- Publish a coffee table book of subway maps and how they have changed since 1904.
- Issue a commemorative subway postage stamp.
- Develop educational programs for schools explaining the importance of the subways.
- Celebrate by making your station shine. (You clean your station.)
- Break ground on the Second Ave. subway.
- Give each station a plaque featuring the station's history.
- Have the public name subway cars for New York figures, events and places, such as "The Spirit of Jackie Robinson."
- Open the shuttered City Hall station, a long-hidden gem, as an art museum.
- Have transit workers wear badges saying the "Subways Are 100 Years Old and I'm Proud of It."

The MTA is currently reviewing the suggestions, but in the meantime, winners are getting a free unlimited weekly Metrocard from the two watchdog groups. Gothamist is impressed that a suggestion like "Make your station shine" made it to the top, next to sure-fire crowd pleasers like the M&Ms and subway map coffee table. Let's hope MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow is less out of touch than he seems and actually considers some of these ideas.

Gothamist on other subway-at-100 actitivities.