Join Us In Liberating NYC From Hot Subway Cars With Broken AC

After malfunctioning train car #1872 on the 1 subway line was taken off the tracks earlier this week, we thought our job might be done for the summer. But just as with Medusa's head, when you strike down one train car with a faulty air-conditioning unit another one pops up immediately to ruin straphangers' commute home on a 90+ degree workday.

Cases in point:

An MTA Transit spokesperson told WNYC that there are actually fewer cars without air conditioning now than last summer, arguing that the thing that has most changed is the public's ability to tweet @NYCTransit with real time complaints about broken A/C units on trains. "We're engaging more assertively," spokesman Shams Tarek said of the social media effort. "People see they're getting responses and action" to their Twitter complaints.

Clearly, the MTA welcomes this sort of constructive criticism and wants us to inform them when there are problems. So we must band together as a community of cranky, sweaty, profane New Yorkers and make sure that our complaints are as loud and clear as possible. No NYer should ever again have to suffer the indignity of showing up to an after-work drinks event with a sour attitude and even more sour swamp of backsweat drenching their shirt.

So Gothamist & WNYC are calling on all commuters to join us in this effort (check out the instructions below). It's just like Sun Tzu said: He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks, especially when it comes to complaining about broken A/C on the subway, I know this is very specific but trust me, it'll all make complete sense in about 2,000 or so centuries.

Hot cars happen - for years, the MTA says it’s fielded about 14 complaints per day during the summer. But this year, Chairman Joe Lhota said the hot car era was over. So WNYC and Gothamist are keeping a close eye on whether the agency comes through. If you’re on a train with a broken A/C, tweet the car number, train line, and which direction you were headed with #WeTheCommuters, and we’ll follow up to see if it gets fixed.