A hated phrase that subway riders are hearing more often: ‘sick passenger’
New York — A voice over the intercom delivers the bad news, and throughout the car there are audible sighs.
Your train is delayed because of a sick passenger.
Subway riders sit and wonder: Who is this sick passenger, and why is he or she on my train? Any sympathy for the mysterious person is often mixed with annoyance.
At the same time, an intricate effort unfolds out of sight. The train’s crew alerts the rail control center to send an ambulance to the nearest station. The emergency medical workers rush below ground to locate the patient — often a challenge in more labyrinthine stations.
This process can stretch on for more than half an hour, creating a cascade of delays across the vast system. And so the not-sick passengers wait. And wait. Statistics show they are waiting more than ever these days.
Sick passengers have accounted for about 3,000 train delays each month this year in New York City, a figure that has grown drastically in recent years, up from about 1,800 each month in 2012, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The authority alerts riders to the incidents on Twitter, and some have responded by voicing frustration over the disruptions.
Yet despite the frequency of these delays, they remain a persistent riddle for many riders who have no idea what exactly the phrase “sick passenger” means — except that they are going to be late.
Officials at the authority say the incidents often involve riders who have fainted or vomited. Other passengers might have had a heart attack or a seizure, or could be unconscious or even dead. A sick customer is not, as some surmise, a suicide on the tracks, which workers are instructed to announce as a “police investigation.”
The timing and location of a delay can determine how many riders are affected. In September, as crowds of people streamed into the subway after the pope’s visit to Central Park, an A train screeched to a halt just north of West 72nd Street. Someone had pulled the emergency brake in the last car to report that a young woman felt sick.
Nelson Ortiz, the leader of a subway emergency response team stationed nearby in case problems arose during the papal event, told the train crew to proceed to the next express station, at 125th Street. The woman ultimately declined medical help, and the train continued on. But the incident at 6:05 p.m. caused a 13-minute delay in the middle of the evening rush, long enough to delay 11 trains.
In a subway system with as many as 6 million riders a day and 469 stations, some riders are bound to get sick.
The number of delays caused by sick passengers has fluctuated this year, with an uptick during March and April, statistics show. The authority does not know exactly why.
One Twitter post announced last week, for instance: Northbound “#2 & #5 trains delayed due to a sick customer at E 180 St. Allow additional travel time.”
The other top reasons for delays include overcrowding, equipment problems and bad weather. As the aging system — which first opened more than a century ago — struggles to handle booming ridership, the overall number of train delays has also increased.
After a delay this month on an N train Susie Moy was riding, she took to Twitter to complain, as many riders have — often in angry and colorful language. “Enough with the sick passenger excuse,” she wrote to the authority’s account. “No one buys it!”
Moy, 25, who lives in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, has noticed more of these delays and wondered whether they were really caused by sick passengers, rather than equipment problems. If more people are falling ill, the authority should have more personnel on hand to help, she said.
“It just doesn’t make sense to delay thousands of people over one sick passenger,” she said in an interview. “There has to be a better way to handle it.”
The response by the authorities depends on the condition of the sick passenger. Workers are instructed not to move riders who cannot walk off the train on their own and to wait for emergency medical workers to assess the patient. If the passenger can step off the train, someone else — a friend, a worker or a police officer — must stay until help arrives. Otherwise, the conductor must stay with the rider, and the train may have to be pulled out of service.
In 2013, Casey Blue James was standing on a crowded train in Queens when she started to feel woozy and fainted. When she awoke, the train was stopped and everyone was staring at her. A transportation authority worker stayed with her at the station until an ambulance arrived to take her to the emergency room.
When James, 26, who works in publishing and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, had the same dizzy feeling last year, she shoved her way off the train to avoid embarrassment and fainted on a platform. After being told she had a condition in which her blood pressure can drop rapidly, she now carries water and snacks in her bag.
Before it happened to her, she was annoyed by the delays like everyone else.
“I feel much more sympathetic when I hear that’s the reason now,” she said.
In an ad campaign, the authority has urged riders who feel sick to get off at the next stop to get help — and to alleviate delays. Officials have reminded riders not to pull the emergency brake, which abruptly stops the train, because that can slow the emergency response if the train is stranded between stations.
Starting in the late 1990s, the transportation authority tried to reduce the impact of sick passengers by stationing nurses in a few busy stations. But the program ended around 2008, done in by a budget crunch.
Sick passengers, though, persist.
John Rugen, an EMT for the New York Fire Department, has responded to a number of sick riders, including a man who had a seizure this year in Queens. Finding a patient can be challenging, he said, especially at big, busy stations where many lines converge and entry points are spread over a wide area.
Other riders are often impatient, eager to get moving and sometimes oblivious to the condition of the passenger.
“You can’t stop patient care and explain what’s happening,” Rugen said.
For Gene Russianoff, the longtime leader of the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group, being a sick passenger himself taught him that New Yorkers can be remarkably kind. When he once fell forward while on a train and hit the floor, bloodying his nose, people on the train rushed to help.
“It’s the golden rule,” he said. “If you got sick, would you want someone to step over you and say, ‘I’m late to get to Macy’s’?”
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