Subway Suicide

I got to work 35 minutes late this morning--all of it spent in transit (about double the normal commute time from 14th Street). After sitting on one subway for 15 minutes at Penn Station growing increasingly impatient--and, in the aftermath of 9/11, concerned--the conductor announced that my train, along with all others on this line, were not only backed up but going express and skipping Columbus Circle, the station I usually get off at to go to work, due to "police activity." Bad news. That's a euphemism the MTA uses for everything from train accidents to subway shootings to suicides--none of them good (especially when they happen at your stop).
A few minutes later we flew through my station, which was decorated with bright yellow police tape, and one more before finally stopping at 81st Street--more than 20 blocks from my office. Nearly the entire car of commuters emptied out, crossed the platform and descended the stairs to the downtown train line, which we'd been told would be stopping at the station. Of course, as soon as we all reached the downtown platform, there was an announcement that uptown service had returned to normal. Too late for us. "If I'd been a little later, I would have gotten to work a little earlier," one man joked to a friend as we boarded a downtown train.
When we finally arrived at Columbus Circle, the cops had left and the TV cameras were just arriving. (I was met by an NBC camera as I walked up the stairs of the subway station, grumbling under my breath about the extra long commute). I was not alone. A few other colleagues had been rerouted too, and we all walked into the lobby at the same time. All of us were complaining about the unreliability of the subway service (in January, service on both the A and C lines were suspended then delayed for weeks when a fire in subway station knocked out an estimated 600 relay signals used to direct trains) and the inconvenience of being rerouted, when the security guard looked up. "It was a suicide," he said. "Someone jumped in front of the C train."
We all went silent. Spending an extra 20 minutes on the subway didn't seem so bad compared to spending any time under the subway.
Finally, one cynical colleague piped up. "I feel bad for the guy, but I wish he'd done it during off-peak hours."
According to police statistics, subway trains struck 80 people in 2003 and 75 people in 2004, accounting for about 40 deaths each year (yes, believe it or not--some people actually survive a collision with a subway). If the "police activity" today truly was a suicide, it would be at least the 8th one this year.