Women Bitten By Rat At Chambers Street Station
A rat eating food left on a platform at the Chambers Street 
station. Photo courtesy of Marc A. Hermann for the New York Daily News.
Whether you are a regular NYC Subway rider or not, chances are you have seen rats scurrying all over subway stations. Most times they are seen either running around on the tracks or at the back of platforms.
The only positive thing from a clearly negative situation is that rats usually stay away from people. Unfortunately this did not play out for a woman this past Monday who was bitten while waiting for a train at the Chambers Street station. Pete Donohue & Joe Kemp of the New York Daily News has more:
A hungry rat chomped on a straphanger’s foot as she waited for a train in a downtown subway station, transit sources said.
The woman was sitting on a bench on a J train platform inside the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station about 9:30 a.m. Monday when the rodent skittered up to her and bit down on her flesh, the sources said.
Bleeding from the wound, the woman ran to a nearby service booth and asked for help – completely freaking out.
“She was pretty frantic and upset,” a transit worker said. “You could actually see the bite.”
The woman, who is in her 20s, was taken to New York Downtown Hospital, where she was treated and released, authorities said.
The subway rat attack was unusual, the sources said, particularly because the J train platform at the station has a low rodent population. The platforms in the station for the 4, 5, 6 trains, however, are a complete “rat fest,” one source said.
Click here for the complete report.
Honestly this attack comes as no surprise to me. One would have to be blind to not know that the NYC Subway has a huge rat problem. The agency has seemingly been attacking the issue forever but no real progress has been made.
With the cutback on cleaning over the last couple of years due to financial woes, the already losing battle to combat the rat population only became worse. Hopefully the woman does not suffer any long term effects from the bite. If I were her, I would file a lawsuit & I am sure she will.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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I’m sorry, but this woman should definitely NOT sue the transit authority. What happened to her is pretty sickening, but the problem isn’t the MTA, which has no money, the problem is all the other riders (including myself) standing around, watching some d-bag throwing a pizza box on the tracks and then shaking our heads in dismay, hoping that some other passenger looks at us, so we can shake our heads together in synchronized disappointment. The MTA isn’t charged with cleaning up after every single person who doesn’t have the legs to reach a garbage can. It’s simply impossible. The culture of the city needs to change before a lawsuit against the MTA makes sense.