New York losing its train of thought

First, poetry disappeared from the subway. Now prose is on the way out, too.

Instead of offering literature, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority is promoting new improvements to the transit system. Train of Thought, the program that placed literary quotations from the likes of Kafka and Schopenhauer in the unlikely locale of a packed New York City subway car, is being removed, two years after it assumed the mantle of subterranean high culture from Poetry in Motion. In its stead is a new promotional campaign by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that is intended to highlight recent improvements to the transit system.

A spokesman for the authority said there was not enough space for both. Read more about the decline of intellectual stimulation on the subway in The New York Times online.