What is the missing term and what does the series represent?

series/subway.stops New

New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.

Problem

What is the missing term and what does the series represent?

242, 238, 231, 225, 215, 207, ___, 191, 181, 168, 157, 145, 137, 125,
116, 110, 103, 96 ...

The finite series continues beyond 96 (the last whole number in the
series is 14 though there are eight terms after that).  There are no
negative numbers.

-- Tom Turcich <tomt@onramp.net>, October 1995 ("30 year old series
   puzzle not in FAQ")

Show solution

In article <45tjjg$b3@hecate.umd.edu>,
Howard Leathers <HowardL@arec.umd.edu> wrote:
>my guess:
>
>street numbers of subway stops on some manhattan line.  But I'm not
>familiar enough with manhattan subways to know what is missing.

Spot on!  The missing term is "Dyckman St".

I don't know anything about NY subways either, but the power of the
Net comes through again.  I found the map via Yahoo:

        http://www.mediabridge.com/nyc/transportation/subways/

It shows some of these stops in the North Manhattan map:

        215, 207, Dyckman, 191, 181, 168, 157, 145,
        137, 125, 116.

Moving to the Upper Manhattan map, we get:

        110, 103, 96, 86, 81, 72, and then I get confused as it turns,

since it looks like the "last whole number" of 14 is on a different
line.

-- Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>, October 1995