Subway Challenge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The objective of the Subway Challenge is to navigate the entire New York City subway system on a single fare in the shortest time possible.
There are two primary variations of this challenge:
1. Full-system ride that requires you to stop at each station. (Class B)
2. Skip-stop ride that only requires you to pass through each station. (Class C)
There is a third variation (Class A) which requires riders to cover all lines of the system. More specifically that means "During the run, the contestants making the run must traverse completely at least once each segment of right-of-way of the Transit Authority system. Each segment may be traversed either in one continuous transit or in any number of partial transits between stations on the segment."
The three classes of rides are defined by the Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee, created by Peter Samson back in 1966.
On May 30, 1940, two days before the IRT, BMT, and IND were unified in 1940, Herman Rinke, an electric-railroad buff, became the first person to tour the entire system on a single 5-cent fare, doing it purely as a "sentimental gesture." Rinke rode the system for some 25 hours that day. Since then, more than 70 others - supposedly recorded in an unofficial file in the MTA Public Relations Department - have ridden the entire system.
Kevin Foster holds the Guinness World Record for the full-system ride. He set the mark of 26 hours, 21 minutes on October 25, 1989. Searching for a diversion while training to become the first person to bicycle the entire length of The Great Wall in China, Kevin Foster opened up the Guinness Book of World Records to find another challenge. He decided that to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the New York subway system he would spend 85 consecutive hours on the subway, during which time he broke the record for stopping at every station.
Some have critiqued the Guinness record because the rules allow you to exit and re-enter the system during the course of the run. However, to date anyone attempting the Guinness Record has also followed the rules of the Class B attempt as defined by the Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee. Following both sets of rules means that the record will be officially validated and any critics of the Guinness rules have nothing to complain about because the participants also did it on a single fare.
The Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee is not an official body and does not validate any record attempts, nor does the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Because of this, there is room for cutting corners with any record other than a Guinness Record, however it's not clear why anyone would want to ride the subway for over 24 hours straight and cheat their way to an unofficial record. No one has ever been accused of cheating and it's doubtful it would ever happen.
On August 23-24, 2006, Donald Badaczewski and Matt Green made a run setting the skip-stop record. During their run, a Class C attempt as defined by the Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee, they were required to pass through, but not necessarily stop at, each station. Thus they utilized express trains where possible to save time. They did this on a single fare, not exiting the system until the completion of the race. They posted a time of 24 hours, 2 minutes, successfully breaking the previous Class C record of 25 hours, 11 minutes for this feat set in 1998 by Salvatore Babones and Mike Falsetta.
Metro broke the story of this Class C record, which was then covered by many major news outlets, including the New York Times (where it was the most-emailed article), CNN, and Reuters. The Reuters story was subsequently picked up by newspapers around the world, in such countries as Scotland, Argentina, India, South Africa, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Iran. An amNewYork article suggested that the news environment at the time created a perfect opening for such a lighthearted story. Pundits frequently questioned the pair on how they had relieved themselves during their journey. The two invariably answered that they had "held it" or "toughed it out," despite the fact that "it was tough."
Matt and Don compiled a top 5 list of sights to see from the subway, based on what they saw during their ride:
1) The Rockaways at sunrise on the A
2) The Manhattan skyline on the J going over the Williamsburg Bridge
3) The site of the World's Fairs in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on the 7
4) Marble Hill and the Harlem River on the 1
5) The Manhattan skyline from Astoria on the N
[edit] Trivia
Don and Matt began the subway challenge in the Rockaways at Beach 116th Street and finished at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx.
Matt is a transportation engineer who resides in Brooklyn and Don is a law student who lives in Ann Arbor.
Matt is from Ashland, VA and Don is from Grosse Pointe, MI. Mike Falsetta and Salvatore Babones have publicly talked about reclaiming the record for native New Yorkers.
Don and Matt consumed only meager amounts of water and beef jerky during their journey in order to eliminate the need for bathroom breaks.
A 2004 Class B attempt to traverse the system was documented in a short film entitled New Lots
