Get ready for more “partial-line closures” this year. With little fanfare, Transit has unveiled the remaining FASTRACK dates for the rest of 2012. The announcement came via poster, and you’ve probably seen the signs in the fare control areas at your favorite subway station. I guess these week-long, late-night service shutdowns are the new normal.
Anyway, here goes: Service on the 7th Ave. line from 34th St. to Atlantic Ave. or South Ferry will be suspended from April 9-13, June 25-29 and October 15-19. Service along the 8th Ave. line from 59th St.-Columbus Circle to Jay St.-MetroTech or the World Trade Center will be shut down from April 23-27, July 9-13 and October 22-26. The 6th Ave. line will not run from 59th St.-Columbus Circle to West 4th St. from May 14-18, July 23-27 and September 24-28. The Lexington Ave. routes will be suspended from Grand Central-42nd St. to Atlantic Ave. from June 11-15, September 3-7 and November 5-9. All service suspensions will run from 10 p.m.-5 a.m. as MTA crews blitz the tracks without trains speeding by.
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MTA poster version
Off-topic, but connected to subway maintenance and a couple of other threads over the past week — here’s a Popular Mechanics story on the creation of a 35,000-gallon portable subway tunnel ‘plug’ that could be used to isolate sections of under-river tunnels and other deep-bore areas in the event of flooding or other types of emergencies. The story says the option is far cheaper than installing permanent doors at both ends of every tunnel section.
Why “quietly”? This should be front page news. Even the e-mail service advisories don’t mention this.
NYCT please communicate with your riders!
It’s not front page news ’cause the people who matter rarely ride the trains at that hour. Even their summer interns get a black car on the company account (and free dinner!) if they work that late. Jenn, the business major from Maryland, can’t walk back from the train to her shared apartment in Astoria at that hour. It’s a big city out there.
Weekend subway ridership has skyrocketed as tourists and day-trippers from the suburbs–other people who matter–spend their disposable income enjoying the new New York City. So we have to find a way to reduce the impact of work then. Most of the people on the trains after 10 on weeknights are the working poor and other demographics that are largely disconnected from the political process, and this recession has been used as an opportunity to shift burdens onto them, trackwork included.
Thank you for enlightening me. All this time I naively thought they were shutting down the subways at night because that’s when ridership is lowest. Now, explain to me how the working poor of the city are more disconnected from the local political process than tourists.
I wonder when they will decide to do the Fastrack on the J/Z? Also why they want to do Broadway Line fastrack in 2013?
I just learned of next week’s fastrack this morning on my train. It doesn’t affect me since I never ride during those hours on a weekday, but it still seems weird that they’ve been so quiet about it. All the announcement said was that there would be “service changes”–no details beyond that.
[…] suspension returns this week as the MTA gears up for another round of FASTRACK work. The agency quietly unveied the year’s remaining dates in posters that have sprung up over the past few weeks, and […]