General Interest > ::How the subways wiped out graffiti::
MANHATTAN.
While envisioning the future of the MTA recently, transit boss Elliot Sander recalled the past.The city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s had led to a decade of neglect. Trains derailed every 18 days. “Subway crime was a fact of life in a system covered with graffiti,” Sander said.
That described the situation in 1984, when David Gunn was named president of the New York City Transit Authority.
The MTA was two years into its first capital improvement plan, and the 4 line began to get new stainless steel cars. Gunn asked about plans to keep the new trains clean of graffiti.
“They had no plans,” Gunn, still amazed today, told Metro. “They had sort of given up.
”Repainted cars were simply sent back into the system. “You’d have one virgin car in the middle of a train completely covered in graffiti,” Gunn said. “You might as well put a sign on it: ‘Paint me.’”
Tags: graff, graffiti, graffmuseum, sast, saster, streets are saying things, subway, NYC, trains, scratchiti
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