Stay Behind The Yellow Line

The MTA is dragging their feet on repairing the rotting and crumbling edges of midtown's subway platforms, even though their own report nine months ago showed that the wooden edges in some stations are falling apart.

The crumbling conditions can be found on platforms for the downtown F at 34th Street and the uptown B and D at 47-50 Streets/Rockefeller Center -- which rank as the third- and 13th most-used stops in the entire system with a combined, estimated 46 million riders every year. At those stations, the boards are so deteriorated, they've separated from the platform, leaving them weak and with hazardous, inch-wide gaps. "They're shaky! I have been standing on these boards and thought to myself, 'Is this going to fall down with me on it?' " said Katerhina Martin, 38, of Queens, who uses the 34th Street station every day.

Three passengers have fallen onto the tracks when the edge of the platform crumbled beneath them, most recently in Brooklyn. None were injured.

UPDATE: A friend suggested I mention the time that I fell into the gap in Times Square due to a my own carelessness.