It says a lot about New York that our moment of Zen is on public transit. But now the smell of urine in the subway stations will be accompanied by mindless cellphone chatter.

The MTA signed a deal with Transit Wireless to wire the 277 subway station. At an additional cost, riders will be able to talk underground while waiting for the train, but there will be no service in the tunnels.

The MTA screws up a lot—we’ll just say the L train and leave it at that—but we have to give them props for showing some restraint on this deal. If we get didn’t thirty minutes a day without overhearing someone complain about their relationship or the stock market, we’d really go crazy.