Gate Time Travelers

It’s like the customary several-minute delay for the curtain to rise at theaters, only more helpful:

Every commuter train that departs from New York City — about 900 a day — leaves a minute later than scheduled. If the timetable says 8:14, the train will actually leave at 8:15. The 12:48 is really the 12:49.

In other words, if you think you have only a minute to get that train — well, relax. You have two.

The phantom minute, in place for decades and published only in private timetables for employees, is meant as a grace period for stragglers who need the extra time to scramble off the platform and onto the train.

“If everyone knows they get an extra minute, they’re going to lollygag,” explained Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for the Metro-North Railroad. Told of this article, Ms. Anders laughed. “Don’t blow our cover!” she said.

Entirely hidden from the riding public, the secret minute is an odd departure from the railroad culture of down-to-the-second accuracy.

. . .

The minute was originally known as “gate time,” dating to the days when gates were used to block off the ramps that lead down to the platforms. (The gates are still occasionally used at Grand Central.)

At the publicly posted departure time, the gates would be closed; those who had already made it through would have a minute to climb onto the train.

The practice gradually extended to trains to Long Island and New Jersey that start in Pennsylvania Station and the Long Island Rail Road’s Brooklyn terminal.

While The Well-Heeled L Train Customers Cool Their Heels, Soon Time Will Heal All Other Riders, Too

In other news, the 6 train alone carries more riders than the entire Chicago train system:

More than 150 stations on the numbered subway lines, including the heavily trafficked Nos. 1, 4 and 6, will be providing the information by December 2010; in some stations the clocks will be running even earlier, according to a recently released Metropolitan Transportation Authority document.

In the timeless realm of the underground, where anguish can mount with each passing trainless second, this amounts to something of a revolution.

. . .

Although New Yorkers became familiar with the technology after its debut on the L line in 2007, that train, which snakes through Williamsburg out to Canarsie, carries only a fraction of the city’s overall ridership (though it does carry a high proportion of its well-heeled hipster set). The No. 6 train, on the other hand, handles 700,000 rides a day, more than the entire Chicago rail system.

How About The Eyeball Of The Clamshell?

It didn’t take long for the Brooklyn Paper to figure out a new nickname for the latest version of the basketball arena at Atlantic Yards:

From “The Hanger” to . . . “The Clamshell”?

Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner unveiled stunning new designs for the proposed basketball arena at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues this morning, renderings that strive to silence the outrage created in May when Ratner dumped Frank Gehry in favor of a Midwest architecture firm whose first effort, a hanger-like design, fell flat.

. . .

Of course, not everyone cheered the latest incarnation of the basketball arena. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the principal opposition group to the full Atlantic Yards mega-project, described the design as a “big eye ball at Atlantic and Flatbush.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Yankee Stadium Firsts: First Couple To Fetishize Sports Facility By Using It For Something Non-Sports Related

“Couple becomes first to get married at new Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.”

Whatever Happened To?

Four years after eliminating 9 train “skip-stop” service, there are still reminders, making people wistful for the way things once were:

Four years after the line was banished from existence, veteran straphangers and subway novices alike have been puzzled by the re-appearance of the No. 9 sign at the entrance to the 242nd Street Station. Two stops away, at West 231st Street, a small yellow sign hanging above the track — emblazoned with the numbers 1 and 9 — also lends credence to the possibility that two trains still make the 14.7 mile trek from South Ferry to Van Cortlandt Park.

. . .

“Did they bring back the nine?” Frank Petrocelli, 56, wondered aloud as he emerged from the station Sunday. “I always liked the 9. Got me here quicker.”

Alas, New York City Transit squashed any dreams of a resurrection.

“I hope they don’t think the nine is coming back,” Deirdre Parker, spokeswoman for the agency, said of local riders. The downed vinyl covering will be reported to station workers, and the No. 9 emblem covered once again, she said. The same goes for the smaller sign at the 231st Street Station.

When told that the re-emergence of the No. 9 sign was simply a fluke, Mr. Petrocelli grew contemplative.

“Everything gets covered over at one time or another around here,” the construction worker said. “It makes it easy to forget the past.”