Summer is gone, but the subway’s bedbug problem is not. The brave people at the New York Daily News have collected some data on 2014’s underground outbreak, and it’s going to make you pretty itchy.
There were at least 21 reported bedbug sightings or encounters in the subway in August — including a few incidents in which a bloodsucker bit a conductor or a rider, sources said.
According to these transit insiders, there were nine sightings on N trains, three on Q trains and two on No. 6 trains.
The itch-inducing insects also were spotted once each on Nos. 3, 4, 5 and L trains, the sources said.
In addition to riding the rails, bedbugs were found in transit worker crew rooms and subway offices in Astoria, Queens, and Coney Island, Brooklyn (N and Q lines), and Euclid Ave., East New York, also in Brooklyn (A line).
The Daily News’s vermin correspondents seem to have missed the guy who said that he saw bedbugs on the 7 train. Maybe it was a false report, and there are, in fact, no bedbugs on the 7 train. Or maybe we are now sharing our commute with so many bedbugs that it’s simply impossible to keep track of them all!
Somehow, the MTA continues to not lose its mind over this. “More than 5.8 million people ride 8,000 subway trains on an average weekday, but the MTA has found no bedbug infestations on any trains, and has found and treated bedbugs on only 16 trains,” said spokesman Adam Lisberg, who previously referred to bedbugs as “an interesting story but not a big problem.” However, he added that the agency is in the process of hiring “a recognized expert” to help resolve the issue. In the meantime, you have another reason to just go ahead and move to wherever you’re spending the holiday weekend.
