14-Jan-2012 - With Subway Shutdown, Major Repairs and Irked Passengers

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It was a bold experiment. For the first time in the century-long history of New York City’s 24-hour subway system, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was going to shut down large sections of an entire train line from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for four nights in a row to let subway workers scrub down and spruce up the tracks.Transportation officials said it was the best alternative to their standard approach of sending workers in to repair tracks while the trains were still running, usually on the weekends. Better, they argued, to do all the work at once rather than a little at a time. But transit officials didn’t know how much it would anger straphangers already filled with gripes about their mass transit system.As transit officials worked on Thursday — the fourth and final night of overseeing repairs on the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 lines — they appeared visibly thrilled at what they had accomplished. Carmen Bianco, Authentic nfl jerseys senior vice president of the department of subways, who said he had gotten little sleep the past four nights, smiled broadly and rattled off statistics about all of the tasks his workers finished as he stood at the entrance to the Union Square station.By the start of the fourth night of repairs, he said, about 900 workers had cleaned and scraped muck off of roughly three miles of track. He predicted his workers would complete all 325 tasks that they hoped to finish.“It’s been absolutely amazing the amount of work we have been able to accomplish,” Mr. Bianco said. “We have been able to touch everything from repairing the tracks, putting down new rails, changing out a track switch, to changing station lighting to working on elevators and escalators to track cleaning. We would never, ever have been able to accomplish that.”Mr. Bianco said that when workers typically try to make repairs overnight or on weekends, they must stop work every 10 to 15 minutes to let trains pass. But that wasn’t the case on Thursday night.“We shut down at 10 o’clock. They can work until 4:30 tomorrow morning,” said Mr. MLB jerseys Bianco, who brimmed with enthusiasm. “They can work without having to stop. They don’t have trains to worry about.”Around midnight on Thursday, the uptown tracks for the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 lines at the Union Square station were crowded with clusters of workers scraping, hammering and drilling away. The air was filled with dust and the scent of cleaning materials. Some workers chipped away at cracked platform tiles. Other workers carefully scraped muck from the bottom of the tracks like a team of dental hygienists scraping away plaque. Many workers wore masks. One worker chewed on a cigar as he dug into track muck.Transit officials said they already had started to consider how they would approach the next rounds of planned track shutdowns. Tracey Bowdwin, chief signal officer, said that each night transit officials were able to get workers organized and start their repairs more quickly. Mr. Bianco said that his management team had been meeting each night and would reconvene next week to figure out how they could apply what they learned to coming shutdowns.The next scheduled track maintenance will shut down the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 lines starting the night of Feb. 13 through 5 a.m. on Feb. 17.“I certainly feel for our customers that are inconvenienced by this,” Mr. Bianco said. “But the outcome is really going to provide us with a railroad that is more reliable.”But the revelers heading home or out on Thursday night didn't share his enthusiasm.Shortly after midnight, Kaitlyn Van Buren, 23, stood by the downtown tracks at the Union Square station, furrowed her brow and tried to decipher the posters explaining the shutdowns. She was trying to go home after dinner and had even checked train schedules ahead of time.“It’s pretty annoying,” she said. “I have one of those apps that tells you when the trains are running.”Harmonica Luong, who had taken the L train from Brooklyn and who was trying NFL jerseys supply to get to a hotel party near Delancey Street, was far more frustrated.“After all of these years I’m not surprised,” he said. “The M.T.A. is in over their heads trying to fix these problems.”Then he turned on his heels and started looking for another way to get to his destination.The shutdown of the city’s busiest subway line, he said, is “not going to stop me from getting where I need to go."

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