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March 19, 2005
Stand. Clear. Of. The. Closing. Doors. Please.
I wish I could blog on the train. When will the entire subway system be a wireless hotspot? With all the extra money the MTA is getting now, maybe they could start working on that?
On my way home this evening, there was a B/D train mixup at Columbus Circle. I heard this professional-sounding announcement about 10 times: "The B as in Brothel [okay, my hearing is bad -- it was probably "brother" or something but I kept hearing "brothel"] and D as in Delta train will be running on the 8th Avenue line [pause] from 59th street [pause] to West 4th street."
Here's my question: The announcement was made in that familiar MTA male voice. Each word was enunciated well, the cadence was slow and careful, and there was no strong NYC accent. It sounded automated, but that type of train re-routing is rare so it's not like the MTA would have that specific message on hand. When the announcement changed a bit to include the word "normal" it sounded like "nawmal" and "fourth" sounded like "fowth" -- dead giveaways for a New York accent concealed underneath lots of training.
It seemed like some MTA employee -- expertly trained to pause between every word and schooled in the art of announcing delays in the MTA-sanctioned way -- might have been making the announcements. Do MTA employees go to special announcement-school to lose their Brooklyn and Queens accents and learn to speak like machines?
If a real person was repeating that message over and over, where was he sitting? Was someone tucked away in a special station office hidden above the platform (where those little doors go)? Or is there a staff of MTA announcement specialists sitting in a office somewhere, waiting for the chance to have their voices piped into stations?
On the Union Square 4, 5, and 6 train platform, this recorded message uses a similar style: "Please stand clear of the moving platforms [pause] as trains enter and leave the station. [pause] Your safety matters to us." While waiting FOREVER for a 6 one day it sounded like maybe they were practicing -- I mean, the thing repeats every 5 seconds, and it alternates between a male voice and a female one. I had to pick out a specific speech pattern (the combined "to-us" at the end) to assure myself it was a recording -- just the same thing infuriatingly repeated ad nauseam.
The MTA has more likely spent all the public's money on some 6-train-like voice automation software, and MTA employees provide pre-recorded pieces that can be pieced together. But wouldn't it be so much more interesting if there were this special discipline? Not that it's effective -- the crowd on my train seemed to trust the heavily accented conductor more than the automated guy. And as much as I love the 6 train for the lumbar support in the benches, I'd hate to have those automated announcements on the F train. The real conductor's don't-hold-the-door lectures are so much more amusing.
Posted by csageday at March 19, 2005 01:32 AM