NYC NOW - Midday News: Immigration Arrests in the Bronx, More Juvenile Detention Abuse Lawsuits, and New Train Designs

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

As part of President Trump’s nationwide enforcement push, federal immigration officials arrested at least one person in the Bronx Tuesday. Meanwhile, lawsuits alleging childhood sexual abuse in New York City’s juvenile detention centers have risen to 540, with dozens more filed this year. Plus, the MTA is replacing its oldest subway trains, but some riders say they prefer the seating on the older models. WNYC’s Sean Carlson speaks with Jodi Shapiro and Concetta Bencivenga, both of the New York Transit Museum, about the changes.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, January 28th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Federal officials say they've carried out at least two immigration enforcement actions today in the Bronx and have charged at least one person so far. Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam herself says she joined the actions. President Trump has pledged to ramp up immigration enforcement across the USA.

Anderson Martinez lives in a building where one raid took place. I'm still a process in this. It's kind of like having that happen to your door is concerning. The NYPD says it had officers there as part of a task force. DHS and other federal agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. More than a hundred more New Yorkers are suing the city. They allege staffers and other detainees sexually abused them as children held at the city's juvenile detention. That adds to the suits filed last year. The now total 540 cases filed.

Attorney Jerome Block represents the new plaintiffs. He says widespread abuse alleged in the suits points to a larger culture of secrecy and misconduct at the city's agencies. The very adults that were entrusted with keeping our clients safe were the ones perpetrating this sexual. abuse. This was systematic, institutionalized, sexual abuse. The city's administration for children's services says many of the cases predate the agency's oversight of juvenile justice, and they have since updated their standard. 41 and partly sunny now in the big city, a slight chance of snow showers by early afternoon. Mostly sunny and 41 temperature falling to the low 30s. Watch out, it'll be gusty as well.

Stay close. There's more after the break. On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. The MTA is in the process of replacing its oldest subway trains. Those are the ones with the vintage-looking orange and yellow seats. They're replacing them with its newest trains, the futuristic-looking ones that are currently running on the A and C lines. But riders say they like the seating arrangement of the old trains that allows couples to cozily sit next to each other in the two or three-seat configurations.

Joining us now is Jody Shapiro, a curator for the New York Transit Museum and the Transit Museum's director, Conchetta Bensivanga. Jody, these trains first hit the tracks in the 70s. Can you just tell us a little bit about the history of them? Sure. Their first introduction into the system was on July 14, 1975. They were an experiment. They are longer cars than most subway cars are. They're 75 feet long.

And they are the second type of car to be that long. And the thinking was longer cars means you can have less cars in a train consist, which is how many train cars there are. Like most trains now have 10. They thought that having eight cars that were longer, even though it was the same size, 600 feet of a train, that it would be a little bit more efficient and move more people around. It was an experiment that didn't really work out the way that they plan. Well, Conchetta, people obviously are having, like, strong feelings about these trains going away, right? Why do you think people are nostalgic about it? we evoke that kind of visceral reaction when you get an R-46. You sort of step in and step back into time. And for so many of us, it's evocative of maybe our very first ride in the subway on our own. Or, you know, it's sort of like the dazed and confused of subway cars or it just evokes that sort of 1970s aesthetic and really does transport you back. There is a, I don't know, almost 50-year argument about what's the best seat on those subway cars, right? And I will tell you clearly that it is by the window.

in the same direction that the train is going. And I will die on that hill. And so people have such strong opinions about it. Jody, you kind of already actually touched on some of these, but like, is there a cool fact about the R-46 that you know that you think other people don't know? They're the first cars that were introduced into our system that didn't have strap hangers, which a lot of people don't realize. They just kind of disappeared.

So short people like me, instead of having the loop to gragle onto, now I have to stand on my toes. Well, I've grown a little bit since then. Same. The introduction of warm colors as a subway interior is totally on brand for the time period in the United States. But as far as transit goes, it was all cool colors with very few exceptions, you know, blues and greens on the interiors of the cars. And that's a whole psychological thing to make people feel calm because they're riding underground. Maybe riding underground's kind of scary for them. The introduction of orange and yellow and that wood paneling, that faux wood paneling,

is a very, like, homey feeling, but it's also a back to nature of the 70s is, you know, there's this movement in industrial design to get away from the machine-aged looks of things. And even with the subway cars, they're a lot sleeker on the outside. There's no more exposed bolts. And so you've got this little bit of sunshine inside of a subway car, which is kind of odd. That was also an experiment. And I think it was borne out that maybe it was good. for the time, but now we're back to the cool colors again.

All the seats are blue again, and the interiors are like this gray blue cast, and this floors are dark so that the lights that are in the car don't have to be as bright, but they appear brighter. There's a lot of psychological aspects to our transit system that people don't really think about. Yeah. Okay, so this is going to cause some controversy. Now we're going to get calls, we're going to get emails or whatever. But it is the thing on the internet.

It's a meme, and you even talked about it already. So Conchetta already opened the lid on this one. But there's a very popular meme out there that shows a photo of the seating arrangement on this train, right? So for folks who aren't familiar with the R-46, it's kind of like a perpendicular thing, right? You have seats that come out, and then two people can sit on those seats, and then there's three seats that are perpendicular to that. And people online rate which seat in that format is the best one. Now, Conchetta, I already know. You say the window seat, right?

That's your number one in the thing. I'm going to say my number one is the other one on that thing, because I like having my feet being able to be out in the middle of the train. What's yours, Jody? I like to sit in the way back of the car where there's two perpendicular seats in the back of the car. Oh, wow. Where it is kind of hidden from everybody else. Okay. I like sitting in that one on what would be the window side, but there's no windows there.

It's my hermit nature. I can sit there and get warm. It's cozy. Okay, this one's for both of you, Jody, you can go first. What's your favorite memory of being on the old R-46? You know, just going to the beach, going to Coney Island on it. They were on the B division when I was younger. I also remember the seats with the cane on them because those cars were just being retired as I was old enough to go on the subway to Coney Island.

What's the downside of the R-46 do you? The downside of them is just they're old. And that's also a good and a bad thing. You know, New York City is very, very tough on all of its transportation vehicles, whether it's buses, commuter rail cars, subway cars. So the fact that these cars are still running 50 years after their introduction into our system is, is nothing short of a miracle. But it's also very indicative of how New York City keeps things running by maintaining them past their useful life because they're machines, and figuring out ways to rehabilitate them to keep them safe and running all of these years.

Conchetta, what's your favorite memory of the R40s? So this is like an experience that I would say. So I don't have one singular memory, but I love the ability to lean on the little partition when you're in a subway car and if I can't get my seat, which happens often. And those afford you the opportunity to kind of just have a little spot to lean in in the doorway. Is there a downside to you, the R-46? To me, it's just another chapter in a very long arc. And I think it's funny to sort of think of, you know, when the new car classes, the R-21 came out, you know, in the early days, some of the press were like, oh, for the first time in New York City history, there might be potentially like articulated open gangway. And we had to be like, or, you know, 1927 with the introduction of the Triplex, which is actually the first time in North American history.

history that there was an open gangway car in New York City or anywhere else for that matter. And so for us, it's just another incredible chapter and a very, very cool story. So, Conchetta, one thing that people have been saying is that the older cars, the R-46s, have way more seats than the new trains, just in terms of actual seats. Can you talk about how the seats differ and why is the MTA changing that structure? So I am not in a position to speak to kind of the thinking of the MTA and why they sort of pivoted. But what I can say, I think, in fairness to everybody involved is the entire. higher formula, what are you solving for, is to maximize efficiency and decrease dwell time.

And dwell time is just how much time you spend in a station. And that is driven by how quickly can you get people on and off any particular subway car and how many people can you get on and off any particular subway car. And so those are the things that the people that are engineering these spaces are constantly looking at. And that will sort of show up in interesting ways, like, for example, the elimination of the poles, the grab poles and the bars that we have now. Also back in some of the earlier cars, not the R-46, but there was in the floorboards, there were actual tile pattern designs that would point you in the direction of where the doors were. And so they are always iterating, always trying to make sure that you can get them on and off as quickly as you possibly can

to minimize that to all time and get to the next station. That was Jodi Shapiro, a curator for the New York Transit Museum and the Transit Museum's director, Conchetta Bensivanga. Thanks so much to both of you. This is really interesting. Thanks for having us. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC.

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