I lived near the 51st and Lexington stop until about 2010, and took the 6 every day downtown. Even then, I would often have to wait for two or three trains before I could shove my way on to a train.

My point is not that things aren't bad or that we shouldn't improve them, just that it doesn't seem like a brewing crisis.

Not to mention that I have no idea how to fix this (other than get the Second Avenue line finished after a hundred years of trying, or the new articulated cars that they're talking about) -- most of the time when I was trying to get on a train, you could literally see the next train at the uptown stop -- they might be able to space them closer with improved signaling (since they wouldn't have to hold in the previous station) but that benefit seems pretty dubious.