"No Feet On Seats" Rule Is In Effect On Trains — Even At 2:30 AM

People know what they are doing, whether it is standing in subway car doorways at stops, leaning on top of other passengers, squeezing themselves into seats regardless of whether there is enough space or not. We live with thousands of selfish behaviorism a day-but my guess is that its getting harder to tolerate on the subway, given the more violent encounters of the past two weeks (the teenager who stabbed a subway molester, the woman who got hit as she tried to intervene in an altercation).

I wouldnt put bare feet on a seat as bad a trangression as not offering your seat to an elderly person or a pregnant passenger (have some freaking self respect and decency, people!) but its not cool either. i say bring in the train cops during rush hour until we all remember our manners. some of the "nicest" most middle class people could use a refresher course on how to share space.

This is a sad fashion statement in this city today . No Grown man should be rocking Flip-flops anywhere outside of their home ! No grown man should be rocking sandels, or open toed footwear on the street . That's for the beach ! nobody wants to see or smell your funky-ass feet on a subway train , or bus . As for the occupying more then one seat, They should get tickets for it every single time they do it ! I don't mean just the minorities, EVERYBODY ! I can't tell you how many times I've seen (Not Minorities) people with there feet, bags, and bodies draped across seats on the train and cops just ignor and walk by them . Reason why this happens ?Because it's a hell of a lot easier to give a minority a ticket for this infringment, Then it is to do the same for a not minority . Because there is more of a chance that the "Non Minority" will file a complaint,file a lawsuit, nd generally be a pain in that cops ass if they give them the ticket for it !

Lived in the City my whole life, rode the trains my whole life, have never had the thought that I deserved to put my feet on a seat that some one else might want to use (when the train fills, after I get off).

Also, they should arrest people for putting their wet umbrellas on the seats and making rainy day commuting even worse.

i'm all for this - ticket away. in fact, the PD needs to be more diligent. maybe they could start hanging around during rush hours and get the idiots who insist on holding their scalding hot coffee dangerously close to others' faces.

Smack the shit out of them, Don't be afraid ! If they place there hot coffee near your face , You can always use the "Woman" defense . Seriously !! That's dangerous .

The careless coffee splashers annoy me, too. I've had coffee spilled on my dry clean only business clothes by these idiots more times than I can count.

*YAWN* it's a law. it's shitty, and it's a shitty LAW. You will be ticketed. If you've gotten over, regardless of whether you're young old, from ohio, or whatever, you got off, lucky.

But to make a be deal because it's an obviously moneymaking ploy, is to ignore the fact that when there's laws we have the choice to follow or take our chances with an unfavorable outcome.

Anybody crying about how unfair this story is, needs to get up outta here. Punk ass.

Just last year I got pulled off an empty car for having my foot up on the seat. It was around 4am on the D. Got yanked off a couple stops shy of the end of the line at Coney. They rushed me hard. Had to sit on a bench with some wild drunk for close to an hour while they ran my license. Madness.

Plenty of people get summonses for all sorts of retarded things everyday in the city. Stop giving these whining transplants attention.

you trust the nypd? haahha

im amazed they havent run their shopping bag sting operation. dozens of people have been busted for stealing a shopping bag left unattended in the subway.

problem is there is no law that says you cant pick up property lost on the subway even if you didnt intend to return it to lost & found or attmempt to find its owner.

this is the nypd at work, they dont work to make you safe, they work to collect revenue.

fuck em all.

ozik that was the dumbest thing i ever read,

cops are not patrolling, they are collecting revenue.

silver has it right.

whats the point of riding the train when no revenue collecting or arrest activities will happen while your standing there, they stand on the platform wait until a train pulls into the station, pick people off the train, give them tickets, lather, rinse, repeat for the entire shift.

if you think that this creates safety...youre an idiot.

this is an example where the authority of the state overreaches and encroaches on the autonomy of the individual. yeah, get that a-hole laying across three seats or putting their feet up during rush hour while people are standing and too weakwilled to demand a seat, but doing this on the overnight shift is plain shitty.

does placing your feet on a seat define disorderly conduct as written into the MTA rules, of course not.

but when you have rich white people write rules its generally written so that no loophole exists and grants the police every and any angle to collect revenue.

heres an example:

some passengers “jump” a turnstile when their improperly swiped or malfunctioning pay-per-ride MetroCard does not grant access, only to discover, after the fact, that a fare had been deducted from their card. These situations may not give rise to a sustainable charge of theft of services, however, “turnstile jumping” and related conduct, whatever the stated rationale, creates an environment of disorder including the perception among other passengers that the fare was evaded. ***

*** see MTA stealing your fare by deducting it from your card but not granting you access is OK, its not a crime by the MTA to steal your money, but a crime by hopping because people might think your stealing services, WOW.

thanks to bloomberg we have pregnant women getting tickets for sitting on the steps even if they are sick,

i once saw a guy getting a ticket for screaming AAA_YOO to his freidn across the street, another DC ticket,

i once saw a cop give a ticket to a guy who hopped over a park bench to enter a field, ticket for entering the park by unauthorized entry, look at the examples, improper use of a milk crate, want more examples why bloomturd and ghouliani and the nypd are a-sholes

just ask, i have a ton of them.

my favorite was a kid from my hood, he got a ticket for not wearing a shirt!!! for real!

fire them all and lets start over.

A little ramblish there, go figure.

Read the res of the many comments for some pretty good justifications as to why people shouldn't put their feet on the seats. It's a pretty simple act for better city hygiene, something we should all be able to get behind.

That police get on the cars, look around and ticket is fine. It's a more efficient way to patrol subway cars than riding around in one car. For that matter, though, I have seen police walk the length of trains without locked doors. I've also seen police get on, ride one stop, and get off.

The rest of the police assholery you list has nothing to do with this, except as an example of police sometimes wasting their time. I suspect you think that you are somehow proving putting your feet on the seats isn't wrong by grouping it with other crimes you don't think are wrong, which isn't really a good argument.

If police are on the trains giving tickets for this sort of crap, it means police are on the trains in case someone gets robby or stabby or threateny. If those police were on the trains for the big crimes and NOT handing out tickets for misdemeanors, it wouldn't be using their time efficiently.

That said, there aren't enough police to go around - we should ALL say something when people are asses on the train.

So what? Their in the transit system, that's enough.

They aren't on the trains. They are on the platform. 1 cop for every 2 cars, steps in, looks, grabs whoever he wants, then they wave to the conductor to let the train go.

You got it. They nabbed me last summer on the D. They also think at those late hours everyone is either stoned or drunk and they blast that baton of theirs against the pole or seat. Nearly gave my sober tired ass a heart attack.

I was arrested for having my feet up on the seat, recently.

A couple of weeks ago, I was one stop from the station where I get off for work at a magazine off the Kings Highway F train stop. I had my feet up and an officer stepped on the train. He pulled me aside and ran my name.

It turned out I had a warrant out for my arrest for not paying for an open bottle of beer I had on the street in February. I didn't recall the ticket for the beer--possibly because I was, you know, intoxicated at the time.

So for a foot up on the subway and an open bottle of beer almost a year ago, I was put through the whole arraignment tour. First I was held in a cell at the Coney Island precinct, and then I was brought to central booking. For a foot up on a bench and an open bottle of beer, I was imprisoned for a day of my life with pedophiles, violent crime offenders, and a handful of other unlucky men.

The moral of the story? Don't trust the cops. They can and will imprison you at a moment's notice for next to nothing.

And on Thanksgiving night, a man was shot in the head on my stoop. My downstairs neighbor's grandson walked outside with his brother and was shot in the head by one of a group of youths. There was only a brief mention of this on the gothamist newsmap. That and a brief paragraph on the local news were the only coverage the murder got. As far as I know, the murder remains unsolved.

Why? Possibly because the cops are too busy meeting their ticket quota for people with their feet up on subway trains to solve murders in low-income parts of Brooklyn.

Bet you'll pay your fine promptly next time.

I got this same ticket on Jay street In brooklyn at 2 am like 5 years ago.

glad I never showed up or paid it. Seems my life has gone on, Get real on real crime guys.

Awesome.

A little enforcement maybe will get people back in line on the subway at ALL hours.

I'm tired of the bullshit I see and welcome ticket-writing as enforcement.

And if enforcing laws brings in revenue, great.

All you have to do is not break the law and there won't be any tickets.

Pretty fucking simple.

"Why is this happening?' the Harlem resident and Cincinnati native said."

Yeah, imagine that.

Did everyone miss the irony? The cop wrote the guy a $50 summons and then said that it helps protect people from getting robbed.

I'm just glad there are cops out there patroling the cars at 3am but where were they when that girl was in trouble at 9pm.

this was in Manhattan and the other incident was in Queens.

What? No one here wrote, "Go back to Ohio if you don't like it here!" even though this guy actually is from Ohio? I personally can't stand people who put their feet on the seats, no matter what time of day it is, and I also hate people who lean against the poles during rush hour. Get your damn body off the pole so the rest of us can get a hand on it.

A few weeks ago on the 6 train, I was witness to a couple of 20 something europeans breaking this law. As the train rounded the sharp curve into Grand Central, one of them slid off the seat and onto the floor. It was hysterical!

Show a little class. Doesn't matter what time of day or how crowded the train is. Common courtesy is a lot like common sense. If you don't want to be bothered by the police then keep your feet off the seats!

The guy in the photo deserves a ticket.

Yea right so this midwest transplant gets a ticket and goes 'whats going on here guys!' and they confess that they are being forced to meet quotas and would normally warn people! My ass

Word.

THIS they prosecute. The hip hop guys in the cars, the mariachi guys, the IPod people turned up to 11, them they leave alone.

Get the priorities straight: noise pollution is worse than some clown taking up 2 seats on an empty car.

In-SAAAAAANE, like Crazy Eddie.

www.forgotten-ny.com

Hey Ben, your writing style is very good. You didn't say "2:30 a.m. in the morning". Compared to the other news writers here, you could be another Shakespeare.

Here's a thought: keep your filthy shoes off the seats. I may have to sit there after you get off, and I don't want the crud from your shoes on my clothes. Keep your feet on the ground, you freakin' urban hillbilly. Don't put the bottom of your shoe on the pole where some little kid is going to be holding on shortly. And men, close your legs. Unless you have some sort of balls ailment, close your legs. Why do you have to splay out like that, you animal?

"Not all disabilities are visible."

AGREED! Why on earth does anyone feel justified in putting their dirty feet on subway seats? Thanks for putting NYC street dirt on the seat or pole.. Eternal toddlers like this who probably also spit on the sidewalk and block the entrances deserve to be fined. Maybe they will at least understand one consequence of their actions.

I have no problem with someone putting their backpack or purse on the seat when it's not busy, but shoes and feet NEVER belong on the seat. That's just nasty.

how about typical street thugs spreading their legs to take 3 seats???

That's not just thugs. I see white dudes in business suits doing the same thing. My general strategy, if that's the only seat left, is to sit down as violently as possible and push the guy's leg back into his own space. Though considering what's been going on in the subway lately, maybe I should be scared of getting stabbed for that...

I think the spread-legs thing is meant to imply "My junk is sooooooo big I can't even keep my legs together."

'I think the spread-legs thing is meant to imply "My junk is sooooooo big I can't even keep my legs together."'

in that case, they should just take off their pants. why bother with pretending? at least i can tell them, "oh. now i understand. i did not know that."

"spreading their legs..." hmmm. are they asking to be f...? nah. probably not.

Actually, with their low hanging pants, I think they are all about easy access for their home boys.

The guy is an FIT student from Ohio, which means he has been here, at most, three years, and he hasn't learned basic NYC behavior yet? The number of yokels putting their feet on the subway in the past few years has really increased. Maybe they think this is how NYers behave.

If ticketing is what it takes to teach these newbies a lesson in manners, letting him spend a night in jail might even work better.

What about the fat people who take up 2.5 seats?

thanks BLOOMBERG. all hail bloomturd!

Quotas - Sure, why not? The MTA has gone broke.

Let’s get the NYPD to drum up the much needed revenue.

http://www.mta.info/nyct/rules/index.html

It is a violation to - Place one's foot on the seat of a subway, bus, or platform bench; occupy more than one seat or place bags on an empty seat when doing so would interfere with transit operations or the comfort of other customers.

Judges hate this, if you go to court they will dismiss it outright. Thats what happened to me when I got ticketed for it.

Yes, this city is nickel and diming people with this kind of petty shit but really, you have to put your feet up in a subway? At what point do you realize you're not at home?

At 3 AM when there are only 5 people in the train car its acceptable to me.

So at 3 a.m., you wouldn't mind if I went into your living room, sat down on your sofa and put my dirty shoes dripping with slush and salt up on your loveseat.

I agree with you a million percent: It is NEVER acceptable to put your feet on a seat in a subway or bus. Never. I don't understand how anyone thinks this behavior is ok.

Some people think it's okay because they've never been taught manners by their parents. Look around and you see the next generation of people being raised like this. Little kids climbing all over the seats, walking all over them, and the parents just act like nothing is happening.

this is plainly an anti-homeless policy. of course now the cops are justified, because evidently EVERYbody gets ticketed, right? good job, dude.

fatsos should also have to pay extra when they use more than the one seat alloted to a normal sized individual.

people caught throwing trash in subway cars and throughout the system should be fined and forced to clean-up duty for a week in the tunnels.

people playing their "music" (often hip-hop, salsa or rock as the case may be, and sometimes dance music) loudly should be fined and then forced to listen to opera at volume 10 (their usual volume of choice) for 8 hours straight.

bums should not be fined, they should be ejected from the system and the city for good.

Individual seat indentations are foolish for subways -- the single bench style is much more efficient and also makes more room for people who are standing.

The newer cars (Q line) have bench seats BUT they also have an additional handrail/pole which effectively splits the bench seat in half. So instead of having a bench that can manage six people with some judicious collective jockeying and butt-shifting, you now have effectively two three-seat benches with no room to maneuver. Ever taken the middle seat on a three-seat bench and know how much fun that can be? Now the big benches are like that. Good job designers!