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The performance is held daily, just off Broadway.

Cue the symphony — two trains squawking to a stop on opposite sides of a subway platform.

Part the curtains, those steeled and sliding doors that sequester the ensemble’s ranks until the moment comes.

And finally, bring on the actors. See them scurry, crisscrossing between trains. See them slither deftly around a trash can or a bench or an indecisive peer. See them throw elbows more fit for the hardwood of Madison Square Garden, which is just to the west.

But consider the moment when slapstick comedy turns to a most harrowing New York City drama: The travelers turn back. The car doors close across the platform. Profanity reigns.

“It’s in the hands of fate,” one veteran player, Jan Geiger, 50, said of the finale.

Or, more precisely, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Many riders tussle daily with the timeless question: local or express? But for the denizens of the N, R or Q trains, traveling uptown through Midtown, the calculus is a bit more complicated.



Every morning, during peak commuting periods, two trains often arrive at about the same time. Sometimes the express leaves first. Sometimes it is the local. Sometimes at least two local trains will depart before a single express does. Sometimes they move together. And virtually every time there is a decision to be made, riders scamper across the platform, groping for a competitive travel advantage even as they are unsure why they have made their choice.

“It’s a gamble that you take,” Michelle Price, 34, an investment adviser, said of the dash. “Sometimes you win; sometimes you don’t.”

According to the transportation authority, the confusion is caused by a dispatching quirk on the Q train’s route on weekday mornings. Some Q express trains become locals after leaving 34th Street — crossing over and eventually going to Queens — but some do not. If an express is not changing course, it can leave at the same time as a local at 34th Street. If it is, a dispatcher must decide which train leaves first, said Charles Seaton, a spokesman for the authority.

Announcers occasionally inform passengers which train will leave first, though this often happens after the doors of the departing train have begun to close.

For a rider, a wrong choice, to say nothing of two or three, can lead to several minutes in initial delays. The amount of time lost can accelerate for passengers with transfers to make at the next stop, Times Square, who may miss their connections. (Since all N, Q and R trains stop at both 34th Street and Times Square, most of the switching at 34th Street is most likely done only because a rider thinks a train will leave first.)

But there is often a deeper indignity conveyed in the expression of the blundering traveler — a rare unguarded moment, when many others are spent with faces buried in iPod playlists or other reading material. Heads shake. Eyes roll. Teeth clench. Sometimes, someone chuckles in resignation. They have gambled, and the city has won.

“You can see it in the faces,” Mr. Geiger said. “It’s kind of like scratching the last box on a lottery ticket and it didn’t match.”

Of course, the city’s subway system is known for its myriad physical challenges, placed before riders like hurdles on an Olympic track. A beginner’s event is the sprint at 42nd Street, completed by those chasing down a crosstown shuttle that, as veterans know, tends to linger at the station long enough for nearly everyone to catch it.

For a time, another daily test was held at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where local residents knew to anticipate an abnormally elevated step as they exited up a staircase — and often tripped anyway. (After a filmmaker’s 87-second documentary of stairway stumbles ascended to viral status last month, the transportation authority fixed the step.)

Still, the 34th Street shuffle presents a unique wrinkle. Riders know it is a matter of providence — or at least, a dispatching decision as mysterious as any deity to whom they may appeal.

“Mornings are hard,” said Jessica Bishop, 24, from the East Village. “You don’t have time to be running back and forth, playing a game.”

And yet, strategies abound. Jane Zhou, 30, from Jersey City, prefers the local train because it leaves first “8 out of 10 times,” in her estimation. Mr. Geiger, a manager at Bergdorf Goodman, said the savviest move was to follow the trends of the crowd.

Some riders prepare in advance for the platform flurry. “Usually I’ll wear flats,” said Alyssa Frake, who commutes on the N train from Park Slope, “just in case I have to make the dash.”

Others said they felt uneasy about leaving their allotted train. Courtney Bryan, 36, from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, by way of Atlanta, attributed the guilt to her Southern origins. “It’s this grass-is-greener thing,” she said. “You have to stick with your roots, stay the course.”

Ned Gaudette, 43, who travels to Midtown each morning for work, said he preferred a quiet, air-conditioned car to “running around like a mad man trying to shave a minute off my commute.” Brittany Corn, 27, from Hoboken, N.J., mused that among passengers who choose incorrectly, “if someone’s getting frustrated, they’re already late.”

For sanity’s sake, the wisest counsel may be a standard childhood truism.

“It’s like when you’re lost,” another commuter, Daniel Dobrolowicz, 23, said. “The worst thing you can do is move around.”