168th Street Subway Station

How is this not a FIRE HAZARD!!! This station should be shut down until stairs are put in for safety purposes. If a building had nothing but elevators as a way on to or off of a floor, the building would be shut down for failure to meet code. This is definitely a fire code violation. Can you imagine? God forbid.

OMG, WTF! willing to walk 11 blocks up from 157^th than torture myself at this station (1 train). exit the train into a cloud of dust & enter a line to get onto an elevator that is the ONLY way out & 60 ppl deep. an asthmatic claustrophobic’s NIGHTMARE. BTW, i never post on Unilocal but i am traumatized.

Strongly avoid, unless you want to be stuck in long lines, waiting for one working elevator or an extremely late train. They ARE making improvements to the station, but the date for completion seems so far in the future, you may as well forget about it.

168 St AC1 station is seeing some changes! Mercifully, they are finally cleaning it up installing new tiles, paint, fixtures, etc. This is a handicap-​accessible station, and there’s normally an MTA employee manning the elevators pressing the up and down button for some god-​forsaken reason… Maybe it’s a light-​duty assignment? I have no clue, but it’s kind of ridiculous. I am happy however, to not have to touch the dirty elevator buttons so whatev!

Literally the grossest subway station. Probably get asbestos down in the 1 train where they have been literally working on construction for about a year or more. It doesn’t look any better, so not sure what they are doing. Also those elevators are pure hell. Why don’t you put in some stairs if you are going to be doing anything helpful at all.

Connecting at 168^th Street to catch the 1 train undergoes a labyrinth of long and windy stairs, passageways, elevated mezzanine and a elevator ride. This station is forever ongoing construction. Two stairways are closed and all the pillars are wrapped with see-​through waffle wire making the platform extremely narrow with no standing room. The 1 train platform (either Uptown or Downtown) are both extremely dark, dingy and narrow. Strap hangers can see and hear in plain sight a long standing water leak dripping profusely from a hose directly onto the rail track. Contractors and MTA skilled trade laborers are always standing on the 168^th Street — 1 train subway platform chit chatting about off-​the job NONSENSE rather than supposedly fixing this platform!!!
MTA: When will you fix the water leak and put an end to the endless construction? When pigs fly?

The A train is ALWAYS late in the morning and packed beyond belief.
Not to mention there is always someone begging for money as you enter the subway on the way to work.
There is usually a smell of urine or garbage surrounding the platform and the late trains really just annoy me.
Come on MTA get it together !!!
We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each day for what?
Late trains and the risk of catching bed bugs?
Lol I’m not about that life.
They need to do better.
If I could drive to work every day I would.

God help you if you have to utilize this menacing dump after 11 PM. Make sure you get on the elevator with a group of either Jamaican health care workers or uptown artists, because the nice middle aged Dominican mamas and daddas are all at home either in a stupor from working so hard or watching tv. Since I’m a native New Yorker of Italian extraction, I tend not to romanticize the icky. God, thank God for Fort Lee, New Jersey or even Miami, Florida, for the love of Christ!

For some reason I like this station. The C is always near by or at the station and the A is almost always close behind. And I always get a seat!

There was a time that I used to commute from Washington Heights to SoHo. During that time the transfer from the 1-​Train to the A-​Train was usually an epic race to the elevators to see who could get on the elevator car first, close the door and prevent others from getting on. To the victor (s) would come the knowledge they escaped the bunching into an elevator with constant false starts of closing the door because people did not seem to know how not to keep their hands from setting off the beam that prevented the doors closing.
So the victors also were able to run off the elevator and head to the A-​Train or C-​Train as opposed to attempting to navigate their way through a huddled mass of folks who would taking their extremely sweet time trying to transfer to the train or go to the hospital. I loathe this station second only to 42^nd Street.

You take elevators to get from the 1 to the A/​C. How fancy. I managed to get an A in my transferring. Nothing unusual to me about this one but it’s not my area of town. There’s even cell reception in the elevator until you start walking down to the A/​C platform.

Every day I work, without fail, I take the A from Brooklyn to Washington heights. Sometimes it takes 40 minutes and sometimes it takes much longer than that. But I very rarely have a long wait for the downtown A express.
The morning crowd leaving the station is nearly unbearable. I learned that unless you’re the first one up the stairs you’re going to be stuck behind the slowest group of people. So I switched up my train location. Still difficult. Then I realized how dumb I was by not exiting out the north side of the station. Sure it is a longer walk to work outside in the freezing cold but I never have to wait behind slow, defeated crowds and can usually get to Starbucks before the rest of the train can. Huzzah!

This subway station is the perfect «hub» in my neighborhood. As both a resident of Washington Heights and an employee at NewYork-​Presbyterian, I’ve used this station more times than I can count. Going north, it’ll shoot you up into Inwood or the Bronx. Going south, the A will get you to Columbus Circle in about 15 minutes, the C will take you local, and the 1 will cruise you down the West Side… if you can survive the trip in the elevator. Working in a hospital department that deals with infection control, we have a colorful nickname for it: «The Tuberculator». (Just…don’t breathe in. You’ll be fine. I promise. You actually have a better chance of getting stuck in it than contracting tuberculosis…)
The 1 Train station is waaaay underground, and going into it is almost like visiting some dirty lost relic. It makes me think of the tunnel the pink slime from «Ghostbusters 2» runs through. (If you’ve been there, I dare you to disagree with me!)
The 1 Trains have that nice electronic «countdown sign» that counts down the minutes until the next arrival. The A and the C both come fairly regularly, too.
This station can be jam-​packed with hospital staff and med students alike, but it has yet to really do me wrong. It’s a vital transportation hub here in the wilds of Upstate Manhattan.

This station gets me to civilization from Washington Heights, as the A express is pretty much a godsend when I want to get downtown, and would much rather take the C to get to UWS/​central park instead of the 1.
There’s nothing very wrong with the 1… except the elevator of doom at this particular station! They closed off the stairs to go down to the platform, so you have no choice but to take a slow, stuffy, potentially anxiety-​and-​claustrophobia-​inducing elevator ride that mimics the feeling of descending into the earth’s molten belly. Indeed, the 1 platform is always sweltering regardless of seasons. But! The 1 platform is also aesthetically unique, with large arches, an open middle, overhead bridges, and intricate tiles (once you get past the dirt & grime). There are also old-​fashioned lamp post lights on the overhead walkway, so if they ever clean this area up, it may actually look pretty cool. While I’m waiting, I distract myself by wondering how those stray pigeons became trapped underground in the 1 tunnel.
The A/​C platforms are typical of most subway stations, and way less stuffy and more well lit than the 1. Open up those stairs so we don’t have to take that elevator please!

While the A/​C station upstairs is kept clean and relatively safe and well-​lit, the 1 train downstairs is filthy and disgusting. To call it a «fen», is an insult to swamps everywhere. There are leaks onto the tracks that have been there for the 11 years that I have lived here. The elevators are always broken or slow and it is near impossible to catch a train down there due to the cramped fire hazard conditions. How about another fare hike for more bad service? If the MTA put just a little money into the place, they could make it into a real dump.

Big station serving the A/​C and 1 lines that has clearly seen better days.
The most distinctive trait of this station as you enter/​exit by the West side of Broadway, near CUMC/​Presbyterian Hospital, is the smell of urine. There are often homeless people sleeping just outside the station, or immediately inside, on the mezzanine at the end of the first ramp of stairs.
There is no station attendant: the attendant booth by the entrance near the SW corner of Broadway and 168^th was recently demolished to remove asbestos. There are often police officers inside the station, though, and I’ve seen many arrests happening here.
The countdown clocks by the A/​C tracks are somewhat unusual: the proximity of the next train is given as number of stations (i.e. there is a Brooklyn-​bound express train 2 stations away) rather than in minutes.
You access the 1 line through 3 elevators. One of these elevator has an attendant, while the other ones will warn you whether there is no attendant[1]. reaching the 1 train reminds me of the inscription at the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The insufferable heat inside the elevators; the slow descent into the bowels of Manhattan; the narrow corridor where passengers exiting the elevator and passengers entering the elevator collide; the walls and ceilings covered in grime; the permanent scaffolding all around.
Once you reach the 1 platform, though, you realize that the station must once have looked very different. The tunnel, which is built without the use of pillars or columns, is framed in beautiful arches, dimly lit from large white globes mounted on ornate original light fixtures[2] hanging from the walls. Look up at the ceiling[3] and you will notice large terracotta medallions that once held light fixtures. If the lights were chandeliers, the station must have looked like a ballroom! These medallions are now barely visible, and are similar to the ones that collapsed at the West 181 St. subway station in 2009.
Let’s hope that the ceiling of its sister station at 168^th St. does not collapse as well…
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
[1] Which to me sounds like: «Take the elevator at your own risk».
[2] The metal pieces on which the huge light globes are mounted may even be exquisite pieces of art, if one could actually see through the multiple layers of grime and dirt covering them.
[3] I have the impression that the ceiling is covered with Guastavino-​like tiles, but it’s very hard to see.

Meh. Not great. But not bad.
Awesome to have three subway lines here. It’s big. There are multiple entrances and exits located at various intersections. There are multiple areas with seating. It’s relatively clean-​ish. And the elevator operators, when they are there, tend to be quite friendly (as MTA employees go).
But the people who work the booth are either absent, curt, of rude. I hate having to take the elevator to get to and from the 1 train, and forget the unbearable sauna that the 1 line becomes during both the summer (thanks to natural heat) and winter (due to pumped in heat).

This is a huge-@$$ station with yellow wooden bannisters and concrete platforms. It’s easy to get around, and the A train makes it feel closer to downtown than it is. (Just be sure and get the train before it goes local – like 11 PM. Otherwise you might as well take the C and bring your knitting.)
(From SubwayNut’s blog:
«The station is a two platform, four track station. The station is the reverse of most other express stations. The A express tracks are on the outside wall side and the C’s terminating tracks are in the middle. The station is designed this way so C trains can reverse more easily. They simply come in on the uptown middle track discharges of passengers, runs beyond the station at tiny bit (trains turning around are visible in the station) the T/​O changes ends, than comes back in on the downtown middle track (using a X-​over switch before or after). If trains continue down these two tracks they reach the 174 Street upper level yard (this yard was built on the upper level as an easy way to build a, then proposed, extension over the George Washington Bridge). This unique layout was possible because after the station the line becomes two levels again with A Express trains going back onto a lower bypass level for 163 and 155 Streets, and the C up onto an upper level. The station itself has a full length mezzanine with exits at either end and the transfer corridor to the ¹⁄₉ elevators towards the middle. The trim is Maroon with a black boarder [sic] and the standard ‘168’ 1 tile below. On either platform there is no mention of the stations map name 168 Street – Washington Heights»)
The station also serves the 1 local (red) line, and you can take an elevator between the two lines. I find on weekends the only thing to do when I want to get up here from downtown is to take the 2 or 3 between 42^nd and 96^th streets, and then transfer to the 1.

Damn it, I strongly like this station. Compared to the H.A.M. that is 163^rd Station, this is a godsend.
Why?
–Three major subway lines
–Countdown clocks (love that ish)
–Accurate subway arrival announcements
–Busy location (foot traffic is a good thing – they can’t get us all!)
–immediate proximity to New York (Columbia) Presbyterian Hospital
–Elevators
My main issue is the loss of a station attendant – come on MTA!