Take the Train: A Day on the G with My Favorite Transit Rider

Last week I traveled to Brooklyn to spend a day on the New York City subway with my daughter Lauren — guest of one Transportopia episode, and after ten years in New York, by my admittedly biased reckoning, my favorite transit rider in the world.

Lauren moved to New York from Austin, Texas, almost exactly ten years ago. The same year she got on a plane east, we sold the family second car — a 1998 Honda CR-V we called Herman. She hasn’t owned a car since. Today she lives in Brooklyn, works as an SEO manager at the New York Times, and rides the G train to work.

The G is, in a lot of New Yorkers’ opinion, the strangest train in the system. It’s the only line that doesn’t run into Manhattan — connecting Brooklyn and Queens to each other instead of funneling everyone onto the island. It’s famously short, so it stops only halfway down most platforms, which gives rise to a beloved bit of local choreography Lauren calls “the G train jog.” Every summer, the MTA shuts the G down for signal maintenance that never seems to make it run any better. And somehow, despite all of that — or maybe because of it — Lauren loves it.

In this episode, I take the G with her to work, navigate the awkward death of the MetroCard (after a 32-year run) and the arrival of OMNY tap-to-pay, and then sit down at the New York Times cafeteria to talk about what it’s actually like to build a life in a city where the train is your car and the platform is your driveway. We talk about schlep culture — including the time she and her husband bought four matching dining chairs one by one off Facebook Marketplace and carried them home on the train. We talk about the “subway is dangerous” myth that won’t die. We talk about what the MTA gets right (24-hour service) and wrong (everything about the G in summer). And we end on the question every New York transplant eventually asks themselves: when, exactly, do you stop being a transplant and become a New Yorker?

Lauren is the best ambassador for transit life I know. Her bottom line, which became the episode’s bottom line: take the train.

Views on the G Train with Lauren and the New York Times

Transportopia — the intersection of transportation and utopia. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, or right here on Transportopia.org.

SHOW NOTES — REFERENCES & LINKS

The MTA — mta.info (official site, all NYC subway info)

The G train service page the notorious service change closings for 2026— https://www.mta.info/article/service-changes-g-line-2026

OMNY (tap-to-pay) — omny.info (MTA’s contactless fare system)

End of the MetroCard — https://www.mta.info/press-release/mta-partners-iconic-culinary-vendors-celebrate-end-of-metrocard (MTA’s official MetroCard sunset announcement)

New York City Transit Museum — nytransitmuseum.org (the place to go for token, MetroCard, and subway history)

Austin, Texas

Capital Metro (Cap Metro) — capmetro.org (Austin’s public transit agency)

Cap MetroRail Red Line — capmetro.org/rail (the commuter rail line referenced in the episode)