(fanfare music)
- Yellow Productions Presents how to ride NYC subway,
I'm Chris, this is Yellow Productions, how to travel guides
that are fun and formed of entertaining.
This is part of my series of travel guides on New York,
in this one I'm going to be telling you everything
you need to know to ride this subway.
I'm breaking it down into nine different tips,
give you some general information first, then I'll talk
about buying tickets, finding the station,
getting in the station, getting on the train,
getting off the train, exiting the station
and then some concluding remarks.
If you wanna watch some of my other videos from New York
you can click one of these cards up here,
find the link in the description below, or you'll find the
link to my New York City playlist at the end of this video.
Let me first start out with some general information about
New York City Subway, it is a very big subway system
it has 472 stations serving 27 lines,
and it operates 24 hours a day.
The routes are typically numbered or lettered,
so one, two, three, A, B, C.
There's a few different types of trains,
there's rapid trains they call them express trains,
and then there's local trains.
The local trains stop at every stop, the express trains
stop every few stops, they skip some.
If you're looking at the map of the subway, you will find
the white the white circles are the express and the local
stops, the block circles are only the local trains.
You should pay attention to directions when you see
things like Uptown if you're in Manhattan,
that's typically North Manhattan.
If you see Downtown that's typically South Manhattan.
Also, you really want to pay attention to the stations
and the directions that they go because sometimes a certain
station entrance will only be going a certain direction,
and if you go in the subway you can't often just exit again,
and you don't wanna have to make a costly $2.75 mistake
because you went in the wrong entrance.
The second tip for riding the New York City subway
is to plan your trip, and for planning your trip,
don't be old school don't use a paper map, or don't just
try to get to the station, figure out where you're going,
but use an app, come into the 21st century, Google Maps
will do it in pinch but one of the best ones
I think is called City Mapper.
One of the great things about City Mapper,
it's much more detailed then Google Maps is,
you put in where you want to go, you hit go,
it'll give your route, but in addition to giving you
the route, it'll tell you things like you walk a little bit
it'll give you the times for the trains, and then it'll even
tell you things like what's the best section of the train
to be in to transfer, it'll tell you how long it is
to transfer, it'll tell you how many stops to go,
and it'll all work while you're on the train too,
and it'll show you where you're going on the connection
so definitely get the City Mapper app,
it's for Android and iPhone.
The third thing to know is about buying tickets,
and there will be these types of ticket machines
at the subway stations.
These accept credit card only, these big ones
accept credit cards or cash.
Simply put, you don't really wanna buy single ride tickets,
you wanna buy one of the re-loadable cards,
you can do a single ride if you're only gonna be here
for one ride, and it is $3 for a single ride,
it is good for only two hours of purchase,
but what you wanna do is you wanna get a Metro card,
and then you can say get new card, it costs a dollar
to buy the card, you can either get a regular metro card
that you fill up with a certain amount of money, every ride
is $2.75, so this one will give you two rides for example,
or you could get the unlimited ride card,
depends how long you'll be here, you can see seven days
is $32, a month is $121, if you wanna add buses that
is a little bit more for the express buses.
Once you're done with the machine out will come a
shiny new metro card like this, I'll point out this
is not an ICE card, it's a magnetic stripe card,
the magnetic stripe is right here, once you've got this
you'll swipe this through the turnstiles
over there to get in.
If you ever wanna know how much money is on your metro card,
you can use these machines too, you just say MetroCard,
get card info, there's a little thing over here, you put
the card in, and then it will tell you how much money
you have on your card.
Now that you've planned your route, you know what station
you wanna go to, and you got your metro card
it's time to get in.
Make sure the station you're getting into you get in
for the correct route or line, you'll see the numbers,
the letters, the colors, and so make sure
also going in the right direction.
If it's a staircase entrance it'll typically have some
lights on the top, if you see green lights on the top
that means it's a 24 hour entrance, if you see red lights
that means it's an exit only, or a part time entrance.
Once you're in the station, to get in the part where you'd
actually get on the train, you have to swipe
your metro card at the turnstile,
it'll either be a waist-high turnstile,
or a full height turnstile.
Swipe your metro card with the mag stripe facing you
at kind of a medium speed, you just have to get
the hang of it I don't have a better description for the
speed other than that, too fast or too slow, it won't work.
Now that you're in the station, you need to find your train,
look for the route, the letter or number,
and the direction up on the overhead signs.
In big stations you may be walking up to 15 minutes to find
the platform for your train, and also make sure
it's the correct direction.
Uptown is typically North in Manhattan,
and Downtown again is typically South.
Okay so you've found the platform, now just get on
your train when it gets here, make sure you get on
the correct local or express train.
But when you're riding the train, seriously don't bother
listening to the announcements, the speakers
are usually lousy, the microphones are lousy
from the train operators, they've got thick
New York accents, the best way is just to count your stops,
if you use the City Mapper app that I told you about
earlier, you'll know how many stops, five stops,
you just get off at that stop.
Also can be worthwhile knowing the stop before your stop,
so you can see the station just outside when you get there,
and you'll know your stop is the next one.
Also, when you're riding the train don't stare at the people
on the train, don't get on an empty car, there's
a reason why people aren't in it,
it is either hot or it smells.
If you're wearing a backpack, remove it so you don't bump
into people or stuff doesn't get stolen out of it.
Stay awake, don't fall asleep cause otherwise people might
steal your stuff or you might miss your stop, but yes
there are pickpockets on the New York City subway,
so do be careful.
If you're standing, make sure to hold on to the railing
because the trains do stop and rock, and restart suddenly.
Locals might not be holding on, but they are used to it,
and if you're watching this video chances are
you are not used to it.
Now that you're at your stop, you need to exit the station.
If you use the City Mapper app, and it has a few stations,
it'll tell you what exit to go out of, so take a look
at the overhead signs to find the correct exit.
When you get to the turnstile,
you don't need to swipe out, just push out.
Your metro card is valid for transfers up to two hours after
you swiped it into the subway.
You can go from the subway to the bus, or bus to a subway,
but not subway to a subway, for a transfer to work
in New York City, you basically have to ride a bus
at some point.
And finally, when you're all done, go wash your hands
or use some hand sanitizer when you leave the subway,
it can be kind of germy, definitely don't eat anything
until your hands are clean.
Thanks for watching, if you enjoyed this video please click
on this yellow ball, subscribe, follow me on Facebook,
Twitter, Google+, or Instagram, or click here or here
to watch some of my other videos from my New York series,
you know you want to.
Alright thanks, bye bye.