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Prewalking

Mon., May 23, 2005

When savvy New Yorkers are waiting for the subway, they walk to a specific spot on the platform in order to board a specific car. (If they’ve ridden the route often enough, they know exactly which platform point to walk to.) This way, when they reach their destination subway stop, they are nearest the exit to their street-level destination. Most New Yorkers perform this action whether they’re fully conscious of it or not, while others care passionately about it. Most people, for instance, do it on their way to and from work, while at times, you’ll notice that after a subway has pulled up to a stop and opened its doors, some people on the platform are booking it in order to seemingly inconveniently enter a specific door of the train, instead of simply boarding where they’re standing.

I don’t know if they’re aware of it, but the New York Times seems to have been the first to name this complex yet commonplace phenomenon. Last summer, in a tongue-in-cheek guide for Republicans visiting the city for the convention, they called it prewalking. (See “Surviving in the Land Down Under“ by Randy Kennedy, in the Sunday, August 29, 2004 issue.)

Andie and I have been using the word in our casual conversation since then and bandy it about with friends to allow it to virally catch-on with others. But a cursory Google search shows it hasn’t caught on, with most references to prewalking referring to a developmental stage in infants. Yet even though the practice remains essentially unnamed, it exists, and in places outside New York.

For example, I noticed via an item this week on Boing Boing that other subway systems have guides folks have assembled in their spare time, to show graphically, for instance, board here in order to exit the system here. The Toronto subway system, for one, has the wallet-sized TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide, while for two quid at a UK bookstore, you can purchase The Way Out Tube Map, which is a prewalking guide to The Tube in Central London. Having such a guide for New York’s subways would be great, although it would probably be the size of the Cleveland phonebook.

Tags: Subway | Comments have been closed.

On May 24, 2005 at 11:27 p.m., Andie Hine wrote:

i think we should write the prewalker's guide to the NYC subway! we would have so much fun doing the research and it would give our lives purpose!