{"id":330022,"date":"2026-08-26T10:06:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T10:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/330022\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T10:06:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T10:06:26","slug":"132f-meet-the-man-calling-out-nycs-infernally-hot-subway-stations-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/330022\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018132F\u2019: meet the man calling out NYC\u2019s infernally hot subway stations | New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a recent August day in the subterranean furnace of New York<\/a> City\u2019s subway, one bearded, curly haired man was studying his phone for different reasons than the other wilting passengers \u2013 to track the soaring temperatures and ponder how underground train stations can cool down in an era of climate crisis.<\/p>\n

Jack Klein, a 31-year-old construction site manager, has in the past two years taken it upon himself to become a sort of guerrilla subway heat operative, sticking teardrop-shaped thermometers to steel beams in seven of the hottest Manhattan stations and posting social media videos<\/a> of the hades-like summer temperatures that commuters have to endure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis line must be cursed,\u201d Klein said on the 4\/5 line platform at 14th Street-Union Square, one of the city\u2019s most blistering stations, as he dangled another of the monitors and saw the digits climb to 99F (37C), a good 10F (5.5C) hotter than aboveground.<\/p>\n

Close-up of a hand holding a teardrop-shaped brown thermometer. Close-up of a phone displaying heat index.<\/a>The teardrop-shaped thermometers that Jack Klein affixed to steel beams in seven of the hottest Manhattan stations. The heat index reached 132F (56C) in an elevated section of the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and Chambers Street subway complex.<\/p>\n

The heat index, which combines the temperature with New York\u2019s clinging humidity, rose to 116F (46C), well above the level<\/a> at which heatstroke can set in. \u201cIt\u2019s been worse \u2013 I\u2019ve seen it get to 120F [48C],\u201d said Klein, as two nearby police officers shifted uneasily in their heavy bulletproof vests. \u201cBut this is definitely uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards it did indeed get worse. The monitor\u2019s temperature reading, which displays on Klein\u2019s phone, climbed to 101F (38C) with the \u201creal feel\u201d heat index hitting a delirious 132F (55C).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just too hot, it\u2019s terrible, too much,\u201d said one Italian tourist, named Leo, on the platform. Another passenger, a woman fanning herself, likened the heat to an oven. \u201cI just want to get outta here,\u201d she said. The heat\u2019s biggest impact is upon subway staff \u2013 such as maintenance workers and cleaners \u2013 who have to toil for hours in these temperatures, a situation that their union describes<\/a> as dangerous.<\/p>\n

Most of Klein\u2019s in situ magnetized thermometers have disappeared, either removed or fallen, but he has now switched to helping relieve the heat by heaving down large dispensers of water<\/a> to platforms and agitating for better seating and proper fans.<\/p>\n

Jack Klein\u2019s water cooler, from which he offers commuters and New York transit employees cold drinks. Photograph: @newyorklab.co<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, what the hell is that even doing?\u201d Klein grumbled about a dust-clogged overhead fan in the 14th Street-Union Square station that blasted even hotter air at commuters already beleaguered by a sensory assault of heat, smell and the clanging din of passing trains in this dingy, cramped warren.<\/p>\n

Living in New York often demands a certain gruff stoicism, and older commuters have taken to reminding Klein, originally from Ohio, that the subway has always been hot and the trains themselves weren\u2019t fully air-conditioned until 1993. \u201cA lot of people just say \u2018suck it up\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI get that. But I still see this as a public health issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rising global temperatures \u2013 July was the hottest month ever recorded in the US<\/a> \u2013 from the burning of fossil fuels are ratcheting up pressure on cities around the world to deal with stifling heat on public transport. Some, like London, which still does not<\/a> air-condition all its underground trains, and New York have to grapple with infrastructure built more than a century ago in what was, effectively, a different climatic era.<\/p>\n

Jack Klein on the 4\/5 line platform at 14th Street-Union Square, one of the hottest Manhattan stations. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is getting worse, people are suffering more and more,\u201d said Giorgia Chinazzo, an environmental engineer at Northwestern University whose research<\/a> has found widespread underground passenger distress at rising heat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe underground is overheating more than aboveground, which is creating these extreme temperatures,\u201d she said. \u201cThis summer is a clear sign that we are facing a climate crisis and our built environment isn\u2019t designed for it. In older systems like in London and New York, the metro systems just can\u2019t deal with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underground stations act as a sort of hot box, soaking up heat in concrete and steel and slowly releasing it. As they brake, trains give off heat and air pollution<\/a> and, in a sort of steamy irony, further broil passengers by dumping out the hot exhaust from the air conditioning designed to cool carriages. Tightly packed crowds of commuters \u2013 each person gives off about 100 watts in heat \u2013 adds to the stew, with temperatures sometimes 20F (11C) higher than aboveground.<\/p>\n

\"CommutersCommuters get gusts of hot air from a dust-clogged overhead fans at 14th-Street Union Square.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s subway was designed with a piston system, whereby incoming trains push out hot air via vents, which is replaced by cooler air from above, although this crude ventilation isn\u2019t enough to deal with extreme heat. Yet the vents, along with stairwells and other open spaces, mean stations are also still too leaky to be air-conditioned, unlike the trains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe subway isn\u2019t a submarine, it\u2019s not an enclosed environment,\u201d said Janno Lieber, chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the subway. \u201cBringing down the temperature is a complex problem in a system where the stations are 100 years old. We know this is no fun for New Yorkers. It\u2019s brutal underground in the summertime and every year is getting hotter because of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

So New York has devised a new plan to combat the heat in its stations by looking to a solution even further underground. A new city and state government study will explore if it\u2019s viable to capture station heat and push it deeper underground, then use this trapped heat in the winter to warm up surrounding buildings.<\/p>\n

This system, called a thermal energy network<\/a>, would run chilled liquid through pipes behind walls and under flooring to pull heat away from the platforms and, as the liquid warms, funnel it into storage boreholes drilled up to 600ft underground.<\/p>\n

The study will focus on the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and Chambers Street subway station complex \u2013 which Lieber said is one of the \u201csweatiest\u201d stations, with an average temperature of 96F (35C) in summer \u2013 where this underground thermal battery will soak up and then release the heat in the colder months to warm up municipal buildings including city hall and two courthouses.<\/p>\n

A new study will take place at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall subway station complex, seen here, to explore whether it\u2019s viable to capture station heat and push it deeper underground, then use the trapped heat in the winter to heat surrounding buildings. <\/p>\n

This would knock down platform temperatures by a couple of degrees, or the \u201cdifference between total misery and merely sweltering\u201d, as Lieber put it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we could see is a first-of-its-kind approach that could lead the nation,\u201d said Zohran Mamdani, New York City\u2019s mayor, at a media event at the crumbling Chambers Street station, which is due for an revamp<\/a> (the mayor likened it to a \u201cchamber of horrors\u201d and a background in the Street Fighter II video game).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would be making these stations cool again, and we\u2019d be making what is old new again,\u201d said Mamdani, who has vowed to revitalize New York\u2019s creaking transit system and tackle the climate crisis. \u201cThat means lower energy costs, a more resilient subway system and a cleaner energy future for New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transferring heat in this way isn\u2019t a new idea \u2013 the ancient Romans and the Persians, who cooled spaces enough to keep ice in the desert<\/a>, mastered the flow of hot and cold air long before the advent of electricity. In New York, the city\u2019s vast St Patrick\u2019s cathedral and its botanic garden both use heating from geothermal techniques like this, and the MTA is already starting several<\/a> schemes<\/a> elsewhere in its system to draw away and bury heat.<\/p>\n

\"DigitsDigits climb on Jack\u2019s phone as he monitors the heat at 14th Street-Union Square.<\/p>\n

Experts say this means that there is a feasible path to cooling down overheated stations, in some cases also heating nearby buildings, in cities like New York and beyond if the political will and funding is there.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtracting the heat and moving it away is a rational approach,\u201d said Alessandro Rotta Loria, an engineer who worked with Chinazzo on her research. \u201cYou can deploy this universally, in New York City, London, Rome, wherever you are. The only issue is space restraints and the expertise and willingness to install it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if New York does opt to build this system, though, it will take billions of dollars and many years to refit the largest subway system in North America, which spans 472 stations, 283 of them located underground. And this will just be a fraction of the hundreds of billions that will be required<\/a> around the world each year to keep pace with an overheating planet.<\/p>\n

The 4 million people who ride<\/a> New York\u2019s subway on a typical day will in the meantime have to deal with rising heat \u2013 already the US\u2019s largest<\/a> natural, or increasingly unnatural<\/a>, killer \u2013 with some interim measures, perhaps free water in stations, as is normally available in airports, or altered summer clothing and shift requirements by employers. The MTA did not respond to questions as to whether it will introduce, for example, free water, as Klein has done in an impromptu way himself.<\/p>\n

Even if New York does opt to build a heat-extraction system, it will take billions of dollars and many years to refit the largest subway system in North America, leaving riders to deal with rising temperatures. Photograph: Thalia Juarez\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cOur stations do not just get hot, they turn into underground saunas,\u201d Mamdani acknowledged last week, a motif recently depicted<\/a> on a recent cover of the New Yorker and soon to be taken up literally by Klein, who is planning to erect an actual wooden sauna on the platform of the 14th Street-Union Square station as a piece of art commentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost done and it looks pretty solid. We will see how people react,\u201d Klein said of the sauna. \u201cI think not being from here perhaps it\u2019s like I recognize that [the heat] is actually not normal. I didn\u2019t grow up as a kid riding this so I have a different, outsider perspective. It really is like a sauna.\u201d<\/p>\n

More frequent trains, to whisk passengers away from the platform, will also help. After a lengthy period in a sweltering station, as a sense of dizziness sets in, stepping into the cool air of a subway car comes as a relieving summer joy.<\/p>\n