In the 1970s, a pamphlet titled "Welcome to Fear City" warned tourists about the city's mass transit system: "You should never ride the subway for any reason whatsoever." In the 1980s things were still rough, with over 250 felonies committed weekly within the system.

Leading up to the '80s, ridership was already dropping, and there was a big drop-off during the decade—"it dropped by 25 million passengers between June 30, 1976 and June 30, 1977, and within a span of [the next] eight years, 327 million passengers stopped using the subway." Look no further than John Conn's photos for a glimpse at a darker side of the system during the Bad Old Days.

NYC Subway also has a fantastic collection of photos showing the tagged up train cars, as well as plenty of fearless New Yorkers using mass transit in the 1980s—there are 474 in total, but click through for a brief preview. (You can check out their entire set here.) And here's a look at the system in 1986: