Give The New York Subway Stations Different Names

Here's my contribution to New York City Civic Discourse: the subway stations should have different names.

For people who don't live here, you maybe asking: what? To start with, here are the stations called "23rd Street"

I understand how you could theoretically consider this to be one MegaStation, but it takes 15 minutes to walk from one end to another. If I'm on my phone-map and trying to find my train , I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to disambiguate: I can't just type in "23rd street subway station" and be done. But that's just Level 1.

Level 2 is the "125th street stations" in Harlem and the "Avenue U's" in Brooklyn. In both cases, the farthest homonymous stations are 30 mins walk from each other; the best way to get between Avenue U's in Brooklyn is to to take a 12 minute bus. If I need transit inside your transit you need to change your transit.

But that's just level 2. Level 3 is this monstrosity:

Look, I understand the benefit of naming your stations after a street, in the sense that it could/should be easy to find the 86th street station by walking down from (say) 70th street till you hit it. But, equally, in a very small village it's fine to be called just Bob, because there is only one Bob; when your village gets bigger you need to start going by Bob The Builder, to distinguish yourself from Bob The Farmer; and in a global interconnected world you eventually want to be Bob The Builder of Brighton Beach, to distinguish yourself from Bob The Builder of Bushwick.

Bob managed to do it, the New York Subway can too.

And here's the thing: if there's one thing politicians LOVE, it's naming rights. Do not think of this renaming as a burden; think of it as a chance to placate and/or honor every possible donor and interest group with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Throw one in for yourself, why not! We can rename every station after its current councilmember, I truly don't care, just so long as I can look up a station name and find exactly 1 hit for it in the whole five boroughs.

That said, it is possible to mess things up even with names. Here is an aggravating example:

"These stations have different names," I hear you cry. You might think so.... but if you're sitting on the train itself, and trying to make sure you don't miss your stop, and you look out your window at the name printed on the columns holding up these stations like Samson at the temple, you will find to your shock that all you can read is "Medgar Evers College." Are you at Franklin Av-Medgar Evers College or President St-Medgar Evers College? You do not know, and you need to know within the next five seconds.

We can do better, and we must do better.

Let me close with this. Some time in my first semester of college, a professor asked me how I was getting along. I said I was holding up, but that it was very difficult to get to classes on time when there were three different buildings that had the same name and none of the buildings had signs on them. The professor looked at me wryly and said (something like) "oh that's on purpose, if you don't know where the buildings are since childhood you're not supposed to be here." This is a vibe that I think New Yorkers would rightly disdain, and yet are effectively emulating. I rest my case: (at least) two out of three 86th street stations delenda est.