MTA – Fresh Pond Road Subway Station

Consistently lousy & unreliable train service! Train runs every 10 minutes early morning weekday only! After that, times become wildly sporadic when you will see the next M train! This line should be renamed the Ghost line! Supposedly weekend service was extended into Manhattan like all the other train lines but more often than not train is out of service or running between a few chosen stops that is of no real benefit to anyone, yet M train users pay full fare for part time service!
M line is one of the worst run lines!

This station was just recently refurbished and I would likely have given it at least four stars except for what I will mention near the end of this review.
As part of the renovation, they removed the ramps that led down to Fresh Pond Road and 62 Street and replaced them with stairs. This was a good choice. Those old ramps were awkward to use, too steep for wheelchairs and had a few stairs once you turned the corner thereby rendering them unusable to people who use wheelchairs anyway.
With the renovation you can now get in much closer to the Fresh Pond Road side of the platform because they put in a new swipe access entry point there. Before, you had to walk almost to the far east end to swipe your card. This additional entry is a BIG improvement.
They also put in a nice mosaic in the station. It appears to depict a bedroom with furniture. Also new are glass block enclosures around the stairs leading down from the platform to the level where the Metrocard machines and ticket agent are located. These enclosures are sort of interesting to look at and I would rate them as satisfactory.
The platform itself is now nice, new and smooth as opposed to junky, old and crumbly. Hurrah!
Okay, so if everything’s now hunky-​dory here, why only one star?
THEY HAVE REMOVED ALL (YES ALL) OF THE TRASH CANS!
It would seem this removal of trash cans is to punish people who used to allegedly leave household trash in the trash cans that used to be in the station. Well guess what, now there’s trash all over the platform AND on the tracks.
According to the MTA itself, these actions attract vermin and the latter can cause track fires.
Who’s running the show here, somebody’s pet raccoon?