An Interesting Choice

While I’m on the topic of funny-looking subway structures, let’s discuss the mezzanine at the 181st Street Station on the A train. It’s a steel-framed platform hung directly over the tracks. That’s the view from the mezzanine stair above, looking down on the train I had just exited, and here’s the view from the platform:

The hangers have a curved V shape that I suspect was intended to give some lateral stability to the mezzanine platform. This station is much further underground than most of the subway – the northern end of Manhattan is quite hilly, and a lot of the subway tunnels were bored rather built cut-and-cover – so the station has a high concrete-arch roof rather than the normal low steel-beam and concrete-slab roof.

Regardless of construction type, you don’t have to have a mezzanine. You can put exit stairs on each platform that go right up to the street. Mezzanines allow for people to cross over from one platform to the other and (as is true at 181st) to walk the length of the station (to choose which exit to use) without being next to the tracks. The open design of this one is odd, but then again the presence of the high-arched roof is, by NYC standards, odd. Ordinarily the mezzanine would be fastened to the same steel columns that hold up the roof, but since there are no columns here, the designers had to improvise.

It works fine. I do wonder if people with vertigo are uncomfortable being able to see down onto the tracks in this manner, but in the end it’s just another oddity in a system full of them.