Bloodsuckers have transferred to the Lexington Avenue Line.
Days after bedbugs were discovered on the N line, a No. 5 train was taken out of service on Friday after a rider reported seeing one fall off a homeless man, said Joe Costales, chairman of the conductor/tower division of Transport Workers Union Local 100.
There also was more bug trouble on the N line on Friday: an entire N train was taken out of service because a motorman reported bedbugs in the cab, a transit source said.
The Daily News reported earlier this week that two N trains were fumigated for bedbugs on Sunday, and a third was sent for a gassing on Tuesday. Some of the bugs seen on those trains were in the cab, where the motorman is stationed. Bedbugs also were found in two lockers in an N-train crew room in Astoria, leading the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to fumigate that locker room and another one, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that is used by crews on the N and Q lines.
Union officials and some riders interviewed by The News have called for all trains on the N line to be fumigated, but the MTA did not appear inclined to take that step.
“The subway system has 5.5 million riders every single day and we can’t check all of them for bedbugs before letting them on the train,” MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said when asked about the dreaded bugs being spotted on the Lexington Avenue Line. “That said, when we get reports of bedbug sightings we investigate — and exterminate. This is an interesting story but not a big problem.”
A Brooklyn man told the Daily News that he spotted what he thought was a bedbug crawling on the floor of a No. 4 train shortly after boarding it at the New Lots Ave. Station on Friday morning.
“I killed it with an old MetroCard receipt,” Hector Berrios, 40, a restaurant manager, said. “I turned it over and was like ‘Whoa! It’s a bedbug alright.’ There was blood all over. I don’t even want to think about it being on my clothes.”
He took a photograph of the dead insect, and an expert — Gil Bloom, president of Standard Pest Management, in Astoria, Queens — said the pictured appeared to be a bedbug.
“Bedbugs are a presence in our society and are an issue,” Bloom said. “They will from time to time get on people’s belongings and inadvertently will be carried onto areas like the subway, restaurants, offices.
“I don’t think people should get crazy about it, but you need to be aware of certain threats out there and you need to learn to be careful about them.”
The city’s bedbug population surged in 2009 and 2010, prompting former Mayor Bloomberg to form an anti-bedbug advisory committee to recommend ways to combat the problem. Bloom was named to the committee as an expert.
Costales, the transit union official, said that bedbugs also have been discovered in the homes of two transit workers. Costales said he believes the workers inadvertently brought the bugs home from work — not the other way around, as some transit officials have suggested.
The only solution is for the MTA to greatly expand its extermination efforts in the subway system, Costales said. The authority also should check workers’ homes and fumigate if necessary, he said.
Berrios said he didn’t bug out by what he said on the No. 4 on Friday, but believes the MTA should do more on the bedbug front.
“I’m not saying they do a bad job,” he said. “The do a good job, but they need to do a better job.”
