How bad is the 4?

The 4, the Lexington powerhouse

The 4 is the princess of the Lexington Avenue Line — the busiest subway trunk in North America — running express from 125th Street in Harlem down to Bowling Green, then on to Utica Avenue in Brooklyn. Its green roundel is the one tourists ride to the Brooklyn Bridge, and the one commuters ride to Grand Central when they can't afford to miss a meeting.

The Lexington line as a whole carries over a million riders a day; the 4 is the express half of that. It's the line you take from 86th and Lexington to FiDi in one shot, skipping every local station in between. The 4 also owns the prestige end of the line — Grand Central–42nd, then express past Union Square to Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall.

Rider well-knowns: the 4 south of Grand Central is genuinely fast, but the station at Grand Central is where it all goes wrong — the tight platform, the endless crowds, and the middle-of-nowhere connection to the 7/S if you misjudge which corridor you're in. Northbound, the 4 crawls through the Bronx's Jerome Avenue corridor, where it's the only game for many riders between 138th and Woodlawn.

The 4 is the heartbeat of Manhattan's east side the way the 1 is the west. It's not the friendliest train — it's crowded, it's demanding, and it does not wait — but when you're on it and it's running, you're on the fastest express in the Western hemisphere, and that's worth a score or two of goodwill.