Oct. 12, 2015 Staff Report
The MTA has announced that the No. 7 train will be down between 34 St Hudson Yards and Queensboro Plaza for two weekends next month.
The cuts will take place the weekends of Nov 6-9 and Nov. 13-16.
Service for both these weekends—between Queensboro Plaza and 34 St. Hudson Yards– will be suspended from 11:30 pm Friday and 5 am Monday.
The MTA says that the cuts are in order for it to install its Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) signal system; replace elevated tracks; and for the fortification of the Steinway Tubes (which connects Queens to Manhattan).
The MTA, which is a state-run agency, claims that majority of this work has been scheduled over weekends when ridership is lower than normal.
The MTA will provide free shuttle buses during this time and riders will also have the option to take the N,Q or R trains from Queensboro Plaza or the E, F or G trains from Queens Plaza.
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The installation of the computerized signal system was well underway when I moved in to LIC in 1997 and has been used as both a promise for future better service and to blame current train problems since at least then. The MTA’s budget is being starved by Gov. Cuomo and mismanaged by his Manhattan-centric wealthy Board. And, even with plenty of new cars breakdowns are more frequent.
Yes – it is a 24/7 system and closings for work must take place. But when you have an agency that sets a 92% on-time rate goal (which I think allows for a 5-8 min lateness) only to lower it to a 75% goal next year – one they will probably not achieve. Obviously something is wrong here.
There were regular weekend-long shutdowns even years before that — in the late 80s and early 90s. But for at least part of that time, the MTA ran shuttle buses into Manhattan, dropping people off at Grand Central, the public library, and I think Times Square. If they would go back to that practice, I don’t think many people would be as upset as they are today.
There are just a couple of whackadoodle people who come to this site to support the MTA and love to try to depict people in LIC as crybaby rich people (which I assure you I am neither). The rest of us know what a complete hopeless shitshow the situation with the No. 7 is.
SHUT UP
Eight years? Try 20 years.
Coincidentally, these very same reasons for service interruptions have been cited for the past eight years on those infamous weekend closures. I’m baffled by the MTA’s effectiveness. They may as well have built a complete new line instead… Oh wait, it took them eight years to just add ONE new station to an existing line! Nvm then~
how do you expect them to add stations and fix the system when it has to run 24/7 and handle millions more people than when it was originally built 100 years ago. let me know when you come up with an answer….
Um, adding a new station is not affected by existing service, at all! And that’s how you handle a growing ridership, by building new lines. Would you like to explain how the disaster that is the Second Avenue line is in any way sustainable? At that snails pace and extreme cost, the NYC as it is today would have never been built. Again, the eight years it takes the MTA to build just ONE station, in other places around the world they build complete new lines.
Hence, the only option the MTA has is to “improve” the current system. Not only does that have a physical limit of supporting more ridership, it’s also the MTA’s lack of effectiveness that makes these repairs excruciatingly long. That 24/7 service has been used as an excuse of mismanagement for way too long. The MTA is a shit show and everyone knows it.
Here we go again. Another winter with the endless construction project and shitty train service on the “best” subway line in New York City.
Here we go again, another pointless complaint about the subway system, a system that’s 100 years old and runs 24/7 and needs to sometimes be shut down in segments for larger jobs to be completed.
“Sometimes.” In other words, 26 weekends every year, usually during freezing weather. For at least a decade, maybe more as far as I remember. With no explanation of the amount of work completed and timing of the work left to do. Right — complaints about that are pointless.