The reason is the subway system is so vast and complex; unless you use the E line regularly, you won't know, and we don't like giving folks the wrong directions that can get you lost.
Bullshit CB, I am speaking from my own direct experiences there traveling from the Amtrak trying to find my way out to Queens, so where do you get off trying to claim I'm wrong. In every instance, asking New Yorkers for directions, folks there gave me wrong directions. The one exception was a cop in Penn Station.
Apparently this was common enough as when I asked someone on a train platform which side I needed to get to a certain place (the signs above only referred to the next stop and were useless to out of towners unfamiliar with the city), I was told the wrong side, in one case, overheard by another guy there who overheard the act, rolled his eyes and gave me the right directions.
Following the signs in Penn Station to get to the E train takes you down a long tunnel, up steps, then dumps you out onto a busy street somewhere with no signs telling you that you have to walk down the street quite a ways to then go back underground to access the E train.
Do you really presume to speak for every New Yorker at every time now? This is getting tiresome. I won't even go into the fact that out on Long Island, all you hear all night long as you try to sleep are police and emergency sirens racing up and down the main drag. One night, someone broke into a whole bunch of cars on the street and stole all the batteries.
I was offered the chance to live there but passed on it. New York is best kept for New Yorkers, I prefer my own much smaller city and quiet, crime-free residential neighborhood. Sorry if that bothers you.
