Updating this morning’s item on the end of the planned service upgrades, it seems that the Daily News sources weren’t 100 percent correct. According to The Times’ William Neuman, the MTA and New York City Transit will go ahead with $4.5 million worth of service upgrades. It’s better than nothing, right?
Neuman reports:
Extra service, sometimes in small increments, sometimes in larger ways, will be added to nine subway lines in July, according to information distributed to the authority’s board this week.
The changes include having the B and W trains run until 11 p.m. on weekdays, an hour and a half later than they currently run. And the No. 3 train, which currently shuts down from midnight to 5 a.m., would run during those hours between Times Square and 148th Street.
The changes will cost about $4.5 million for the remainder of this year and $8.9 million a year after that. They require approval by the authority’s board, which meets next week.
While I’m still working on getting the exact details of the service upgrades, Neuman reports that the “1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, B, J, M, N, Q, W and the shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central Terminal” will see additional service. Noticeably absent are the promised service expansions along the IND Crosstown line, more commonly known as the G train.
The original service expansion plans called for increases across the board in the region. However, service increases for buses, the LIRR and Metro-North have since been scraped. Even worse, in some ways, though, are the sources of the money for this increase. The MTA says it will cut administrative costs (good) and subway car cleaning costs (bad).
In the end, this move seems like a PR effort. The MTA was getting slammed for raising the fares without extending service. So they’ve reshuffled some funds to extend service. Whether we’ll notice the dirtier subway cars, I do not know, but I’m not complaining about added service along train lines upon which I rely on a daily basis.
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