Andrew Barta is a modest man with a modest idea: take the eight million people reputed to be the rudest and pushiest in the world, and teach them manners.

No problem.

So Barta, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's senior director of service planning, organized a team of supervisors last year to design a way to teach New Yorkers proper subway etiquette.

The concept culminated two weeks ago when the M.T.A. deployed 30 "platform conductors" to Grand Central Station's Lexington Avenue express train platform, to stand in five-foot-wide newly-painted Day-Glo orange boxes during rush hours and direct waiting commuters where to stand.

"Step aside please," platform conductor Donnell Whitfield now yells at the waiting masses after each No. 4 or 5 train pulls in, urging people to let others off the train before boarding.

"Let them go, LET THEM GO!" Soon after, a muffled female voice echoes through the station, "If you cannot board this train, there is another downtown express train coming into the station."

Then, 45 seconds after each train arrives in the station, Whitfield and his fellow conductors block the doors, arms crossed in front of their Day-Glo orange vests, so no one else can board, the doors can close and the trains can continue their journey.

 

Security guard Tyrome Burton says he gets pushed around

So far the "Step Aside, Speed Your Ride" program is working. Waiting commuters stand diligently to the sides of the orange boxes, which line up with the train doors and are designed to create a clear path for exiting passengers. After passengers exit, the conductors direct the waiting people aboard. It all runs so smoothly and so properly, you wouldn't think it was New York.

"Before we had this program, people would congregate around the doors, and as soon as the doors opened it would be like a football game, everyone banging into each other," said Bill Shrage, a deputy rapid transit superintendent stationed on the platform.

Now, it's more like croquet.

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