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Last Stop on the Line
By Nadine | August 24, 2008
I love the NYC subway system. You pay one fare to go anywhere in the city, unlike Philadelphia or London (the only other cities whose public transportation I know about) which charges you based on how long you ride.
Here’s a fascinating story by Andy Newman in the Aug 22, 2008 New York Times called The Curious World of the Last Stop that describes most of the last stops on the NYC’s subways lines. The photos are great, too.
There are 24 stops on the New York City subway system past which you can ride no farther. For those who get off somewhere else — almost everyone — the end is just a sign on the train. New Lots: wonder what that’s like. Dyre Avenue? Sounds kind of grim. Middle Village — what is that, a jousting park? As it turns out, the end of the line, like most ends, is a place of abiding mystery. . .
Yet to visit all the system’s extremities is to see that the last stop is not a single, monolithic place. There are subway lines that end, logically, where the city runs out of land; lines that end, anticlimactically, where builders ran out of money; even a few that fetch up in bustling downtowns of one sort or another. From the marshy lowlands of Tottenville to the lush hills of Riverdale to the ceaseless clangor of Flushing, the end of the line manages to take in the entire breadth of the city beyond Midtown Manhattan.
