There are days when I feel as though I’ve lived an entire life on a single subway commute. You become bonded to strangers through a series of mere glances; your eyes darting between them and the situation at hand. For example, that mysterious bottle clanging around on the ground. Is it leaking? Should someone turn it upright? Is it full of someone’s urine? And was that smell there when we got on or is it somehow getting worse? Or maybe it’s something more serious — a shouting match between angry passengers, perhaps. Should we do something?

When you’re underground, there’s neither time nor service to consult Google. You just do your best as a creature of the subway. And sometimes, your best is just surreptitiously scurrying your way into the adjacent car at the next stop. As a young woman riding the train to and from work, the ability to discreetly escape into a different car — due to an altercation, a creepy commuter or an ungodly stench — has always been a safety feature of sorts. Which brings me to the sparkly new R211T subway cars unveiled by New York Governor Kathy Hochul last week: