The other day, I was heading to 66th Street and Columbus Avenue from the east side. I figured the best way to go would be to take the cross-town bus through the park and transfer to the B or C Local at CPW. I decided to get off at 72nd street, figuring that the south end of the station would have an exit which would bring me a bit closer to my destination. (I was already aware of the exit on 72nd, next to The Dakota.) To my surprise, I found only vestiges of an exit there at the front of the platform! They had even gone so far as to replace most of the tiles beneath the mosaics along the length of the platform wall, which tell you a street number and which direction to walk. From this, I could only conclude that the exit was closed for good.
Wouldn't it have made more sense to leave that exit open, owing to the fact that the stretch between 59th & 72nd Streets is a much longer stretch than between 72nd & 81st. In other words, they should have evened-out access to the subway. As it was, I had to walk from the front of the platform all the way back to the rear of the platform to exit, and then walk back down CPW. (I'm young, its no big deal, but I'm talking about the logic here.)
When I lived in Queens, I used to notice all of the closed exits in the IND stations there, but I thought that was just an outer-borough getting the shaft again during budget-cuts. But since then, I've noticed the above, as well as, now that I think of it, that there used to be a 47th street exit from the 50th Street stop on the 8th Ave. IND. There, they've even built a wall hiding the former exit, tiled it up, and also removed all but one set of the street-number-and-arrow-tile arrangements. As a matter of fact, a week or two ago, I actually got off the C train, saw the tile sign pointing me toward 47th street, and began walking that way to leave the subway!