I’ll get to the service alerts in a minute, but I wanted to take a second to thank those who help bring Second Ave. Sagas to the masses. I run this site mainly as a labor of love and as an outlet for my writing. One day, I’d love to make a living off it, but for now, I do what I can with those interested in advertising. Three of my top site sponsors recently re-upped their ads and deserve a big “thank you.” They are:
- Station Stops: Metro-North Schedules for iPhone
- iTrans NYC: The ultimate subway app
- The Next Train: LIRR schedules in your pocket
I’m always looking for more site sponsors too. So if you’re interested in advertising on Second Ave. Sagas, drop me a line.
Anyway, on to the weekend service changes. All of Transit’s planned weekend work — except for one change — has been canceled due to the snow that, as of nearly 1 a.m. on Friday night, still hasn’t started to fall. For the MTA, the decision to call off the various maintenance projects is a costly one, and if the snow does not, it will have been a losing gamble. The work on the 7 line, though, continues because this project must wrap before baseball season. If it does snow, some lines will run different service patterns. So it’s a good idea to listen to on-board announcements this weekend.
From 11:30 p.m. Friday, February 5 to 5 a.m. Monday, February 8, there are no 7 trains between Times Square-42nd Street and Queensboro Plaza due to track panel installation on the Davis Street curve. The N/Q and free shuttle buses provide alternate service. Note: 42nd Street Shuttle S runs overnight. Q trains are extended to/from Ditmars Blvd.
12 comments
The weather channel predicted snow at 6 PM today, and kept the forecast on its website a few hours after 6 PM. Then they predicted the snow would start at 10 PM. Its now 10:25 PM. It is fairly balmy for this type of year and clearing. I will make a prediction that the weather report will turn to “flurries” happening mid-afternoon Saturday, in about two hours.
I probably shouldn’t complain too much, but when the weather becomes a political issue, maybe the 24 hour forecast should be accurate more than 50% of the time? Plus the false report (I think it can be considered false if there is no snow before midnight, we have an hour and a half after I type this) will screw up subway maintenance this weekend.
And yes, they were actually hyping a “major storm hitting the East Coast” a couple hours earlier.
What do you expect from a station owned by NBC and Blackstone 🙂
What does NBC’s & Blackstone Group ownership of the Weather Channel have to do with forcasting a snowstorm?
Sean, it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, although it can certainly be argued that privately-owned stations have a significant incentive to be more sensational in their broadcasts, since sensationalism (storm-of-the-century) increases viewership, and in turn, ad revenue. If the Weather Channel were owned and operated by the National Weather Service, I think we’d see less sensationalism.
The 24-hour forecasts are accurate 95% of the time.
In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki claims that weather forecasters are the only experts who are routinely right – when they say there’s X% chance of snow, X% of the time there will be snow.
And I’m not sure what you mean by “the weather becomes a political issue.” If you’re talking about climate change, then it’s a separate issue – climate predictions (“the average temperature around 2100 will be 2 degrees warmer than in 2000”) work differently from weather predictions (“the high temperature tomorrow will be -2”).
CI Yard might get socked in with 4-6 inches of snow so that was probably enough to warrant the Plan 4. And they probably kept the GO for the 7 just so they could put snowbirds in the tunnels between HBP and TSQ.
I thought snowbirds were people who spend every winter in Florida.
Do you mean work trains with some kind of plows to clear the outddor tracks, or what?
Snowbirds are trains sent into storage underground on revenue tracks to keep them away from the snow/ice.
Though it looks like NYCT jumped the gun here. Barely anything for the city to even warrant Plan 4 action.
“Station Stops: Metro-North Schedules for iPhone”
time seems to run backwards in their ad
OT: Anyone clicking on the link in Gothamist’s article “Shanghaiist got shoved into overcrowded subways by new professional subway shover”
be advised that Malwarebytes (I sue a pay version of this software) says China Daily Newspaper is using malicious code. Malware or Trojan therein. Clickers beware.
Last summer, I was in Shanghai, where I took the busiest line, Line 1, at peak hour in the peak direction. There were no professional pushers there, but people had to push themselves in to get on the train. The overall traffic on Line 1 is higher than this on New York’s 4, 5, and 6 trains combined; while Line 1 has symmetric demand, unlike the predominantly southbound travel pattern on the 4/5/6, the crowding levels I observed are still much higher than those on the Lex trains.
[…] the MTA called off all weekend work on February 5, the agency knew it was taking a gamble. Snow was in the forecast, but chances of a […]