New York City Transit construction projects mostly take place on the weekends. Delays are rampant and trains are often rerouted or outright replaced with shuttle buses from 12:01 a.m. on Saturday morning until 5:01 a.m. on Monday.
When the work stand-down was announced last weekend on a Sunday, I figured it wouldn’t disrupt too many projects. While nighttime work on track replacement and station renovation projects ground to a halt this week, the MTA had five days to issue the appropriate safety documents. Well, even though most construction projects aren’t finished in time, the safety training was, and as The New York Times reported, all work in the subway resumed on Friday.
Transit officials said yesterday that they planned to resume regular maintenance and construction work on subway tracks and tunnels this morning, returning workers to the job after more than four days off for a safety review prompted by the deaths of two track workers struck by trains.
The Transport Workers Union president, Roger Toussaint, said that the return to work comes as New York City Transit has agreed to a series of safety improvements, including equipping work crew supervisors with radios to improve communication with train controllers on the movement of nearby trains.
So that’s that. Toussaint is happy with the MTA’s response, and new NYCT president Howard Roberts made his position clear this week with emphatic statements stressing worker safety.
Meanwhile, because work has resumed, weekend service advisories are in place. There are no delays this weekend with the A and C trains because the track replacement project wrapped up one week early. There are a bunch of changes on the N, Q and R lines. For all weekend updates, check out the MTA’s Website.
I’ll see you back here on Monday.