In London -- in fact, all over Britain -- litter bins were removed from train stations long ago, but New York found some giant, solid scary-looking bins and decided to stick with rubbish collection on its public transit. (Well, kind of. The subway is definitely dirtier than London underground. Possibly this is because the over-sized, iron-cased bins are not only impossible to empty but also difficult to accurately fill, since the hole into which you put your rubbish has just the diameter of a pint glass -- all the rest of that beast is made up of bomb-proof iron cladding.)
I wasn't even 100 percent sure they were bomb proof so in the interests of Journalism I thought I'd do some research. Five minutes using Google didn't produce much in the way of enlightenment -- although I found this article from The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen which suggested they are, indeed, bomb proof (to an extent) and they arrived in NYC's subways a little before I did in 2004.
Some more googling time later and I had found various articles about the arrival of bomb-proof bins in London - is that right Londoners? How things have changed since I left....
4 comments:
I haven't seen any bins on the tube - we're still in the same binless limbo we've been in for some time.
I still think the tube is cleaner than the NY subway though - as long as you don't count the countless copies of the free papers lying around. But the free papers are closing too, so...
Personally I'd rather go with no bins (bomb-proof my foot) than have a means for nutters to create more havoc.
I remember trying to find a bin at Heathrow back in 1996 and finally having to give my candy bar wrapper to someone behind the counter at one of the counters where they were selling food.
I can't imagine that any bin can be terribly bomb-proof unless it contains so little litter as to be useless as a bin.
I think it's a nice way to share experience about To be filed under: things they do better than us" experiences so it would be helpful for others who are looking for some information about their issues.
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