MTA Disruptions in Service: Waiting for Godot

A New Yorker's Opinion

Waiting for Godot: A short play about commuting on the New York City subways during the current schedule disruptions.

(With thanks and apologies to Samuel Beckett and the real Waiting for Godot.)

A subway station late at night. An iPhone.

Estragon, sitting on a low wooden bench, is trying to get his iPhone to work. He gives up, exhausted.

Enter Vladimir

Estragon: No train. Ever. No Reception, either.

Vladimir: You may actually be right. All my life, I've tried to look at the bright side. The New York subway's reasonable, and it never closes down and goes everywhere. When I found the commute intolerable, I said, you haven't tried everything. And I resumed the struggle to wait patiently.

Vladimir: May I inquire, where did you spend the night?

Estragon: In a corner of the station.

Vladimir: A station? Where?

Estragon: Over there.

Vladimir: And they didn't give you a ticket?

Estragon: Ticket me? Certainly they ticketed me.

Vladimir: The same as usual?

Estragon: The same? I don't know.

Vladimir: On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago. Or at least a few years ago.

Estragon: Wasn't that when the Ravitch Plan to save the subways was being considered in Albany?

Vladimir: Right, in 2008, when he was the head of the state commission to rescue the subway with a mobility tax on payrolls in the region. He would walk around with that 100-year-old signal light to show how dangerously dilapidated the system had become

Estragon: Did they beat him?

Vladimir: Of course.

Estragon: The same lot as usual?

Vladimir: There's no train. Do you think we came to the right spot?

Estragon: Charming spot. Inspiring spot. Let's go.

Vladimir: We can't.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: We're waiting for the D.

Estragon: How long have we been here?

Vladimir: I don't know. It feels like 50 minutes. Or 50 years.

Estragon: Do you remember the days I could commute with but a few minutes between trains? It was like a walk in the sun.

Vladimir: It's not certain.