With their own line now under constant repair, displaced R train riders have become the city's newest itinerant scourge, packing the C train and ousting devoted straphangers the way fair-weather Christians fill churches on Christmas morning.

According to MTA data released to the Straphangers Campaign and Riders Alliance, the Sandy-induced shutdown of the R train in August has led to a spike in ridership on other lines, notably the C, which has seen a 40 percent increase during the morning commute—the time when one least wants to be pressed into the armpits of agitated and increasingly damp strangers.

Though crowding has been most severe on the C, the A line saw a 21 percent increase in ridership between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. at Jay Street-MetroTech, and at Borough Hall, 4-train ridership rose nearly 24 percent, while 5-train ridership rose 22 percent. Still, the MTA maintains that all is well and everyone is just fine. "Peak ridership on every line in downtown Brooklyn is still under 100 percent of our guideline capacity," wrote Lois Tendler, the agency's vice president of government and community relations. "We are not seeing problematic overcrowding due to tunnel closure."

But "problematic overcrowding" is in the eye of the overcrowded. “I feel like a sardine packed in a can,” Devale Ellis, former wide-receiver for the Detroit Lions, told the Post. “It’s the worst feeling in a world.” The specific world is unimportant to Ellis—the Third World? World Star?—much like the specific generation to which she's (a) voice is unimportant to Hannah Horvath. Imagine if this habit of eschewing definite articles had become trendy earlier in history? "It was a best of times, it was a worst of times," Charles Dickens might have shrugged on his tumblr.

Once safely above ground, passengers have brought their case to Twitter, pleading with the MTA to do something about the odoriferous hellscape that has become their morning commute.

Hey @MTA, please do something about the C train. So few trains and so packed, it's impossible to even board during peak commute times. — Mary Catherine (@mcwellons) December 2, 2013

Of course, there's little the MTA can do, short of corralling the roving R-train riders and sending them off to Eastern Europe. Until then, uncomfortable passengers should never leave home without a pack of gum and their business-casual spiked body armor.

