Picture this: a world where subway ridership has more dips than a roller coaster ride at Coney Island. Welcome to the state of New York’s subway system, where New Yorkers would rather hightail it on a unicycle than ride the train. Now, some smarty-pants experts from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) have come up with a groundbreaking idea – make the subway free on weekends. Shocker, right? Hold onto your MetroCards, folks!

But wait, there’s a catch (there’s always a catch). These experts want to offer free rides *only* on select low-ridership weekends, like that time when they all go to the Hamptons. They think this will help with the terrifying transit death spiral, where falling ridership makes MTA’s bank account shrink faster than the Incredible Hulk’s pants. Of course, authority officials are all ears, but they’re not committing because they’re still fighting over state budget cookies.

Moving on, subway evangelists are begging the MTA to make the system more accessible for our disabled buddies. In 2019, The Times discovered that there were 550,000 New Yorkers who struggled to walk, and two-thirds of them lived further from an accessible subway station than a pizza rat dragging a slice. That’s a whopping 4% of Gotham’s population who basically can’t ride the subway! Bringing them on board, along with clumsy tourists and other visitors who wouldn’t know an accessible station from a subway turnstile, could boost fare revenue. But prepare to break open the piggy bank, my friends, cause that’ll set us back a cool couple billion dollars./n/n Serious news: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/realestate/jamila-norman-homegrown-urban-farming.html