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We are two late middle aged women who pre covid were frequent visitors to NYC and were always comfortable using the subway, although never late at night.
First trip in two years is coming up and we are reading about the subway being less safe recently.
Does anyone have recent experience?
Also heard that Ubers are harder to come by. Again, any recent experience?
ThanksWas there in December and it didn’t feel any less safe than the Tube. We stayed in the lower east side, so hardly glam NYC. Maybe late at night when it gets quieter it might make you think again, so perhaps if you are worried take a ride hail service (lots these days, not just Uber) or a yellow cab.
Easiest way is sign up to the services that are integrated into Google Maps and search routes through that as you can easily choose between metro and cabs.
We haven’t seen late at night for years!
Thanks for your help.I’ll answer your second question first in that yes there are fewer taxis and Ubers and Lyfts etc than previously so I found waits tended to be a little longer than on previous trips. But that’s the situation in lots of uS cities too.
On your first I was there in January and I didn’t feel any less safe than on previous trips. Of course there are always incidents (and some more serious than others) but there were incidents when I was in Chicago last month and San Francisco in March as well.
Just be aware of your surroundings and take the same precautions you likely took on previous trips such as avoiding standing right on the platform edge, not rummaging in bags and not waiving your phone about – all the things I do as a mid 50s male!
Three things to remember:
– there was a recent shooting in the nyc subway
– us Supreme Court ruled against ny state about concealed carry — now in nyc people can carry guns
– pandemic hit low income people really hard in the city and crime increased dramaticallyMy American wife thinks it is definitely much more unsafe there than prepandemic.
I was in Brooklyn prepandemic taking the subway. A bible guy walked in to the subway car to preach, walked between the cars. Then the train stopped for like a half hour. Lots of police came to arrest him. He was hiding a knife in the bible!
Uber itself could be hard to get. But you can try Lyft or whatever is popular these days.
Been using Lyft over Uber 10:1 this year across 6 cities. Lyft’s app is slightly more usable, fares are typically cheaper with more options to wait different lengths of time for lower fares. The only issue I had is it appears impossible to cancel a lyft trip when there are few drivers and it just spends minute after minute searching for one or when it messed up my location.
Over 30 trips I’d also say lyft drivers seemed more friendly and chatty but YMMV.
I was there in April and it was markedly less safe than previous trips in 2019 (I was there in Dec 2021 but didn’t use subway at all on account of needing a bloody PCR test to get home). Many more mentally troubled people taking up residence in it and whereas the huckster/panhandler frequency used to be 50% of my rides, it was 100% this time.
I’m from NYC and was there in April. All my friends think is much less safe and warned me not to take subway. So I did and first trip mental ill man standing in middle of subway carriage with his fly unzipped talking nonsense followed a woman off the train. I am a middle aged woman and I am going to NYC next week and will take the subway but I will be vigilant. I managed to take both Uber & Lfyt — time of day yields highly variable fares and response times.
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