N.Y. MTA to Shut Lexington Avenue Line Overnight for Repairs
January 11, 2012, 9:50 AM ESTBy Esmé E. Deprez
(Adds number of riders affected in fifth paragraph.)
Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Riders of New York’s Lexington Avenue subway lines, the busiest in North America, may need to make other travel arrangements for four nights beginning today as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority closes tracks for repairs.
Stations on the 4, 5 and 6 lines from Grand Central-42nd Street in Manhattan to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn will shut from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., the largest U.S. transit agency said yesterday in a statement. Workers will inspect, repair and clean tracks, signal systems and roadbed, the MTA said.
Completely closing a section of a subway line -- which has never been done for maintenance -- is more efficient and less expensive, cutting to days from weeks the time needed to complete some tasks, the agency said. The MTA, which operates the city’s subways, buses and commuter railroads, has been struggling for years to find cheaper ways to perform maintenance as it seeks to cut costs in the face of budget gaps.
“All of this is work that must be done to maintain the safe, smooth and efficient operation of a subway system that runs around the clock, seven days a week,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in the statement. “By suspending service along line segments, workers can work on and near the tracks without having to interrupt that work every few minutes while a train moves through the area.”
New York’s subways are the only U.S. system that runs nonstop, apart from the PATH train operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the red and blue lines of the Chicago Transit Authority, said Kevin Ortiz, an MTA spokesman. About 38,000 of the system’s 250,000 weeknight riders will be affected, he said.
Irene, Sept. 11
Last year’s Tropical Storm Irene, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and labor strikes in 2005, the early 1980s and the late 1960s shut down the entire subway system, Ortiz said.
The next installment of the agency’s repair program, called “Fastrack,” will close the Seventh Avenue line’s 1, 2 and 3 trains between 34th Street and Atlantic Avenue for four consecutive nights beginning Feb. 13.
MTA board members passed a $12.7 billion budget last month that includes an $86 million deficit.
--Editors: Mark Schoifet, Mark Tannenbaum
To contact the reporter on this story: Esmé E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
