"There is nothing more satisfying than seeing the city's subway cars—stages of so many sigh-inducing commutes and a variety of other horrors—getting unceremoniously dumped into the vast, blue ocean. It's a place where they are free from manspreaders and the MTA—a place where they transform into something a little more useful, it turns out.
As we know, once these old retired subway cars hit the ocean floor (all 18-tons of them), they begin their new life as artificial subway reefs, creating "a flourishing new habitat for varied sea life including sea bass, tuna, mackerel, flounder, blue mussels, sponges, barnacle, and coral, and improved marine environments in areas of the ocean floor that were once barren deserts." Think Barnacle Bike, but bigger.
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The subway reef program ran from August 2001 through April 2010, when the MTA "deployed more than 2,500 deaccessioned train cars to underwater locations off the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia." This included the carbon steel "Redbird" cars, and stainless steel "B-Division/Brightliner" cars, which were all refurbished into "cleaned shells " before being thrown overboard. This means they were stripped of motors, wheels, hydraulics, lighting, Freon from the air conditioning systems, seats, and windows."
