Breaking: MTA announces plan to shutter subways at night

This will soon be a familiar sight to New Yorkers. (Photo by flickr user graphicdefine)

Is the City That Never Sleeps finally going to bed?

After 104 years of life with a 24-hour subway, New York City may have to learn how to cope with a transit system that shuts down late at night. Due to the MTA’s budget crisis and looming cuts from Albany, MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot “Lee” Sander announced today that the MTA will start shutting the entire subway system for a few hours each day.

“I have reviewed our 2008 revenues to date and the projected contributions from Albany,” Sander said during an afternoon press conference, “and as a result, I will recommend to the Board that we move ahead with stopping the trains for a few hours each night.”

According to preliminary plans, during the week, the subways will begin their last runs at 12:30 a.m. and resume service at 5:30 a.m. On the weekends, the last trains will run at 2:30 a.m. with service starting up again at 6:30 a.m.

For decades, New York had resisted calls to close the subway system. In the mid 1990s, transit experts and city planners questioned the need for 24-hour service, and in 1981, an impassioned letter to the editor of The Times explained why the subways had operated 24 hours a day since the inaugural ride in 1904.

But all good things must come to end. With capital construction costs on the rise and the revenues from congestion price no sure thing, the MTA has decided to cut back service in the short term until the economy and their finances recover. “If we implement these service cutbacks now,” Sander explained, “we can can speed up the time frame for our big-ticket capital projects such as the Second Ave. Subway and the Long Island Rail Road East Side Access plan.”

Coming on the heels of yet another fare hike, the news has left New Yorkers, used to getting anywhere at any time, fairly shocked, the promise of 24-hour bus service that mirrors subway lines hasn’t mollified subway rider advocates. “We understand that the MTA is in a financial bind,” Straphangers Campaign guru Gene Russianoff said, “but we’re not prepared to give up our 24-hour subway service. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers rely on that subway service to get to work and to live their lives.”

As far as I’m concerned, happy April Fools Day.