I love stories such as this one. It’s a typical person-on-the-street piece from the Daily News about the station closures along the Pelham Line. As the final phase of this rehab project, the Elder and Lawrence Ave. stations are to be shut for eight months beginning next months. Some residents are unhappy with the project. Or not.
Basically, Daniel Beekman spoke to enough people to find those who want their cake and others who want to eat it too. “It’s going to be bad,” one commuter said. “Eight months is too long.” Another whose son will have to walk to another stop: “I’m concerned for my son’s safety. Why can’t they just do patchwork?” A third: “The paint is peeling. There’s a lot of graffiti. It looks terrible.”
It’s always easy to find a good number of people with varying opinions on anything in New York, and this is just another example of the tenuous relationship with transit improvements everyone has. We want our system to look good, but we don’t want to pay the price of a shuttered station for eight or nine months. Our stop needs work, but I don’t want to be inconvenienced, and as long as everyone else’s stop looks new, leave mine alone. Seems perfectly irrational to me.
12 comments
why are some closed completely and others like Dyckman on the 1 only closed in one direction? Obviously a partial closure is less disruptive than a full one but how is that decision arrived at?
I have to think there are very specific reasons related to the station architecture and the components that need to be upgraded or replaced.
Remember when Jay Walder said they would look into closing lines in their entirety, rather than the piecemeal closures and re-routes we normally see on weekends and evenings?
I think this article is a good indication that this wouldn’t be received so well. At the end of the day, I think people prefer that the station remain open to some degree, rather than being closed completely.
HERE’S an article of interest:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_.....their-jobs
(I know that it may be somewhat off-topic for THIS thread, but I wanted to put the link where everybody here will see it.)
I’ve already written about that report. My post on it from Wednesday morning is right here.
Just curious, why exactly does this take eight months? Are they completely rebuilding the platforms from the ground up or something?
The work is done by contractors. They don’t work nights and weekends.
That is a problem. I can understand not working at night, but why the weekends also?
Plenty of contractors work nights and weekends. That’s why there are so many night and weekend GO’s. These being elevated stations, they probably don’t work nights (due to safety and noise concerns), but I can’t believe they don’t work weekends.
Might be a budget reason. Weekend work runs at a higher rate. Another might be the CM and PM side might not be up to it when it comes to managing the projects. In that case they might be using that time to catch up on the paperwork.
“Omigod precious Dylan might DIE if he has to walk a half mile!”
There’s a fix for these people: Reinstate the draft, starting at age 18 for children normal people & 14 for those of parents such as the above. Draft whiny parents also; I suggest those be sent for hand to hand with the Taliban.
Then we’ll be a stronger, faster, better USA 😉
1/2 of the draftees will be deferred for “health” reasons…….