Daily News from New York, New York • 230

TV IP If A 4 s. aw 4 -'I? II i rfm i. MS The renovated token booth area (right) at Bowling Green station is safer than the old obstructed platform design (left) at 59th St. Lexington Ave. station Ill The city's subway system is lurching toward disaster.

In its "Save Our Subways" series, the Daily News is examining why. the system fell apart and how it can be rescued, via ideas and suggestions from specially recruited teams of experts. Todr.y, a look at improving subway station design. "The problems are solveable they have to be," says Jack Lowery, president of his own interior design firm and head of the American Association of Interior Designers, a New York-based group. "We can't afford not to have the subway as a viable means of getting around.

"If any habitable space looks like nobody gives a damn about it, nobody will," Lowery says. "New York is the design capital of the world. Some outstanding designers might even donate their time to coming up with subway designs if they could be assured the designs would be implemented." The corrective measures do not have be drastic or expensive, says Jack Mahler, a senior designer for ISD a Manhattan interior design firm. "We have one of the nicest looking subway systems in the world," Mahler says. "It's just not clean, and natural finishes on railings, gates and streamlining entrances because "by the time you get to the platform, you're already angry." Forbes and Ergas said token booths often block walkways and should be recessed in walls.

One advantage of unobstructed platform areas would be that they don't provide hiding spots for would-be criminals. Along with many of their colleagues, Forbes and Ergas also believe that restoring the architecture is preferable to simply painting it over. The Transit Authority relies solely on in-house architects and a few consultants for its designs, says Paul Katz, the TA's chief architect. An ongoing program of rehabilitation has resulted in the refurbishing of several of the system's 465 stations. Additional projects are on the drawing board, but the process is slow and subject to budget constraints.

Phyllis Cerf Wagner, wife of former Mayor Robert Wagner, served for about 10 months as the $l-a-year By RICHARD ROSEN A FEW sweeps of a crayon, the designer i raws ns dazzling vision of what the 1 i 1 1 v. ii TV Save Our Subways aesthetics director for the subways under Harold Fisher, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. She says her primary talent was her ability to bring together planners from city government, the Transit Authority and the MTA to work as a cohesive team. OJHfyAGNER SAYS SHE resigned because "we had no money" and Fisher was replaced by Jw Richard Ravitch, who, she says "had a right to appoint whomever he wanted." The aesthetics job is still vacant, although "Ravitch talked to me about continuing," Wagner says. "We demonstrated that with very little money a lot could be done," Wagner says.

"We didn't do it and I'm not pretending we did. But we demonstrated that a management team identified the problems and some corrective measures." Subway concessions present a major problem in terms of security and cleanliness, Phyllis Wagner says. She suggests that private contractors be made responsible for concessions and be allowed to "devel- op them with some uniformity and some beauty; and we'd end up making more than the $10 million that we're taking in now from concessions." "If we can't make our subways work, we might as well move to the suburbs and get cars," Wagner says. could look like. It is all quite dramatic, with terra cotta flooring, exposed brick walls and theatrical lighting.

Sketch pad visions aside, however, the design of the city's subway stations and cars hasn't changed very much since the system opened on Oct. 27, 1904. Except for a couple of notable spots the Bowling Green station on the East Side IRT line and the 49th St. Station on the IND line, with their shiny tiled walls and slick decor, most stations are decidedly undecorative places. But while station design has changed little, the condition of the stations, and of the fleet of cars, has severely deteriorated.

Maintenance is strictly patchwork. Most stations and cars are dirty, noisy, dreary and uncomfortable places where riders want to spend as little time as possible. They are visual disaster areas that do nothing to alleviate the indignities of breakdowns, crime and other hardships millions of straphangers endure daily. These conditions would no doubt have appalled William Barclay Parsons, designer of the city's first subway, which featured ornate ticket booths and distinctive neo-classical style kiosks at the entrances. The kiosks and most of the original styling have been lost to vandals, thieves, age and modernization.

The cane seats of those early cars, arranged at right angles to each other, were replaced by parallel rows of plastic seating. In newer subway cars, the problem-plagued R-44s and R-46s, the old right-angle seating has been reinstituted, along with softer lighting a positive change that makes them appear less forbidding, designers say. With ridership dropping, service worsening and money scarce, an important issue for subway planners is whether it is worthwhile and practical to make design improvements. A team of interior designers enlisted for the Daily News "Save Our Subways" campaign answers that question with a resounding "yes." They say tackling the subway design problem would be a formidable but not impossible challenge and that even cosmetic improvements the subways more other things have been covered by too many coats of paint. The plain, white tile that covers platform walls and tunnels is a practical material that should be cleaned and maintained, Mahler says.

"We can't afford to redo each station," he explains. "With proper lighting to accentuate it, along with repair and cleaning of existing tiles, we could really make a difference." Mahler is a proponent of the natural look for the subways. "Terrazzo floors and chandeliers just wouldn't work here," he says. "We should accentuate what the system is exposed rivets and beams, beautiful mosaic tiling a kind of high technology styling that is now in vogue." Ceramic and plastic-based tiling is readily available from many manufacturers and costs as little as $2.03 a square foot. Susan Forbes and Joel Ergas, partners in the Forbes-Ergas design firm in Manhattan, suggest installing acoustical, paneling on station walls and ceilings to mute noise, providing slotted benches for more platform seating (especially critical with more frequent train! delays) and using murals and other visual aids' to make stations less antiseptic, and Attention: Straphanger: cr 5 so -3 Do you have a creative suggestion for improving the subways? If so, we'd like to hear your ideas.

Send them to: "Save Our Subways" Box 4841 Grand Central Station N.Y., N.Y. 10017.