Asides

The early returns from FASTRACK, the MTA’s weeknight shutdown program, have been successful enough to warrant a year-long trial, the Daily News reported this week. Per Pete Donohue, the MTA has scheduled 12 more weeks of shutdowns beyond the four currently in the works. By year’s end, Transit will have shuttered trains through Manhattan for a total of 448 hours.

As Transit officials justified the move, advocates gave it a lukewarm embrace. The MTA has billed it as an efficiency program, but the authority is providing less overnight service in bits and spurts. “We know it’s an inconvenience to our customers and we apologize for the inconvenience,” Senior Vice President of Subways Carmen Bianco said. “Hopefully, our customers will only have to walk a block, or two blocks at the most, to get alternate service.”

Ultimately, the FASTRACK program has its limitations. Due to the need for nearby redundant service, Transit cannot expand it to the areas outside of the Manhattan core without seriously impacting mobility. Yet, some of the stations in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn need more attention than those in Manhattan. For now, though, we’ll have to cope with weeknight changes through the end of November.

When the MTA announced its FASTRACK program, their initial plans called for work on only the two IRT lines and the two IND lines. The BMT Broadway line was noticeably absent from the work blitz and overnight shutdown. I reached out to Transit this week to find out why the N, Q and R trains weren’t getting the same treatment and found out that the Broadway could be a part of FASTRACK in 2013 if and when the program is continued.

These year, though, those lines will escape the treatment simply because they’re in better shape than the rest of the subway system. “The amount of work along that corridor didn’t warrant shutting that segment at this point,” Transit spokesman Kevin Ortiz said to me earlier this week. Most of the stations that would be shut down along the Broadway line have recently been renovated, and the number of stations that come to mind that need the most work — mostly just City Hall — doesn’t warrant a total shutdown.

I didn’t have the chance to ask about the BMT Nassau St. line, but the Chambers St. and Bowery stations along the J/Z need far more work and attention than that provided by the FASTRACK shut down. Maybe one day, their times will come.