It is the usual reminder, just a little firmer than in the past. This week, as it has done every couple of years, New York City Transit is starting an advertising campaign asking New Yorkers to remember to “please offer a seat” to disabled passengers on buses and subways.

There was a time — who knows if it really existed — when such civility was assumed. However, the new posters on subways and buses give riders an extra prod: “It’s not only polite, it’s the law.”

“It’s the first time we’ve really stressed this,” said Paul J. Fleuranges, vice president for corporate communications at New York City Transit, the largest arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Those who decline to give up a seat on request face up to a $50 fine, he said. (The new campaign also warns that “not all disabilities are visible.”)

As long as there has been public transportation, there has been grumbling about healthy young men taking a load off while the pregnant, the old and the infirm stand by.

Recently, some bloggers have chronicled their own troubles securing a seat while injured or pregnant.

Read the rest…