In part, the authority is shuffling station furniture to improve passenger flow, calling to mind a disparate pool of sources: a little bit of Disney mixed with feng shui.
The changes, part of a roughly $ 900,000 project, have drawn on observations of riders’ entering and exiting behaviors, bolstered by data on which specific turnstiles are used most at particular stations.
The analysis reveals New Yorkers to be as stubborn as they are strategic. They move in straight lines whenever possible, often refusing to use exit points that require a zig or a zag. They hew closely to routine, moving through clogged but favored exits even when straying would most likely get them out of the system more quickly. And many will push through whatever exit is in front of them, be it a turnstile or a siren-inducing emergency gate.
The results can be predictable: incoming passengers find that their bid to swipe into the station is thwarted by oncoming traffic, with exiting travelers stuffing the entryway until the train has pulled away.
The authority has responded with a series of proposed tweaks culled from the Disneyland playbook of pedestrian funneling, using the location of turnstiles as cues to create a desired traffic flow.
At a No. 1 train entrance at Rector Street in Manhattan — where a turnstile and emergency gate previously appeared at platform level, occasionally stranding riders on board as lines backed up into the first car — equipment was moved upstairs. The emergency gate has been exiled out of the typical walking path, perched diagonally from the top of the steps.
“It removes temptation,” said Bill Amarosa Jr., a manager of ridership and revenue analysis at New York City Transit.
So far, fare areas in three stations have been adjusted: at Rector Street, and at Marcy Avenue and Nassau Avenue in Brooklyn. Ten more hubs have been flagged for the next round of renovations. After that, the authority plans to continue modifying fare areas at an average of 10 stations each year.
Jackie Kuhls, the authority’s chief budget officer for subways, said that much of the work involved tweaking past station layout plans that placed major entrances and exits near token booths, which receive far less traffic than they once did.
Mr. Amarosa noted that gentrification had also forced the authority’s hand at some stations, with ridership growth in booming neighborhoods overwhelming once-sleepy entrances. Perhaps the starkest example is the L train station at Bedford Avenue, where annual ridership has grown 190 percent since 1998.
“Four turnstiles probably made perfect sense 20 years ago when it wasn’t a crazy station,” Mr. Amarosa said. “Now we need to put in as many as we can.”
At many stations, including Rector Street and Bedford Avenue, the authority hopes to ease traffic by replacing so-called high-entry turnstiles — the menacing spawn of prison bars and a revolving door — with low-entry turnstiles that allow for quicker access and egress.
A potential pitfall, officials said, is that low turnstiles are more likely to inspire fare evasion, though Ms. Kuhls said the agency had not seen measurable increases in evasions since the changes were made. She suggested that the authority stood to save money by relocating emergency gates, which fare-beaters often slip through after passengers prop them open.
But at Marcy Avenue on a recent weekday, where high-entry turnstiles were replaced with low ones at two entrances near Havemeyer Street, both the promise and the peril of the authority’s scheme were on display.
Jamie Little, 42, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said that until the low turnstiles arrived, she often had to wait for a train’s worth of passengers to exit before finding enough space to swipe her card.
Herbert Gonzalez, 56, recalled bulling through the crowd, head down, in a bid to reach the first car in time. “If I missed it, I’d have to wait 20 minutes,” he said.
Around 2 p.m., though, riders on the Manhattan-bound side noticed a peer across the way, coming up the steps. He wore a pink button-down shirt. He looked hurried. And, without hesitation, he stepped over the turnstile, quickly racing up the platform.
“That’s a perfect spot,” said Ahmad Long, a juvenile counselor from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, who, upon observing the crime, recalled his own youthful indiscretions in which he would “ride the train for free.”
Mr. Long was never caught, he said, but it had been a decade since he pilfered the system.
“I’m 27,” he said, leaning back against a platform wall. “At a point in time, you just get too old for it.”
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