BusTalk

[Mr. Linsky]

HUNDREDS OF BUSES DEPLOYED


By GLENN COLLINS
Published: October 11, 2009 New York Times

The Columbus Day weekend has long marked a celebration of the arrival, in the Americas, of the great navigator. But instead, Sunday proved to be a trial of navigation and late-arrival-agita for city strap hangers, including the tardy, out-of-breath appearance of Josh A. Moore at the Journey Church on West 84th Street in Manhattan.

Barred from the No. 1 train at West 86th Street by New York City Transit, he had to veer 10 blocks out of his way. “I was sprinting,” he said, “and late. And dripping in sweat. This is just a pain. It’s just frustrating.”

Mr. Moore was one of thousands affected by a major schedule of repair work conducted by hundreds of workers on 18 of the city’s 20 subway lines that operate over the weekend. There were detours, diversions and disruptions for passengers all weekend.

A transit agency spokesman, Charles Seaton, said that much of the previously scheduled work involved “outdoor stretches of the system — since the window was closing before we face harsh winter weather, making it impossible to do the work,” he said. Subway infrastructure improvements involved track replacement, signal modernization and station reconstruction. Only two lines, the No. 6 and the M, were unaffected, he said.

Although many repairs were conducted last weekend as well, Saturday and Sunday were unusual for “the scale of bus substitution,” said Paul J. Fleuranges, the agency’s vice president of corporate communications. On Saturday some 400 buses were used to shuttle passengers, and on Sunday, about 225.

Since the subway runs 24 hours a day every day, “there is no good time to do major rehabilitation and system upgrade,” Mr. Fleuranges said. “If we don’t work on the railroad, it won’t work. It begins to fail, and leads to the conditions that plagued the system in the 1980s, which produced rampant derailments and fires that crippled the system. We’re not going to go back there.”

But as the weekend unfolded, some passengers thought they were back there. “I expect the trains not to be working on the weekends,” said Jennifer S. Fisher, 29, an interior designer from Astoria, Queens, who was riding the N train to the Upper West Side. “I feel like it affects me very often,” she said. “MetroCard fares are so high, and I really don’t see a result in any of this.”

Another passenger agreed. “You wonder why they keep raising prices, while service seems to be cut more and more,” said Eric Markowitz, 21, a marketing manager from Chelsea who was trying to visit a friend in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Mr. Moore, 23, an accountant, discovered an orange sign haphazardly affixed to barricades at 86th Street and Broadway. A recent arrival from North Carolina, he was late to his first service at the church, at 145 West 84th Street. He had to go to 96th Street, then walk downtown.

Six subway lines used shuttle-bus service; free transfers were issued. On other lines, trains skipped stops, and some express trains ran as locals.

On Saturday night at the Lorimer Street station on the L line in Brooklyn, rows of people lined up for buses. At the shuttle stop on Court Street, customers swarmed in the front and back doors of arriving buses.

Also that evening at the Bergen Street station of the F and G lines in Brooklyn, a transit worker with an orange vest doled out pink transfer slips to customers in search of a shuttle bus. “This is ridiculous,” said Sally White, 58, a radiology worker from Fort Greene. “Normally it would take me eight minutes to get home. This is probably going to take a half an hour.”

On Sunday, passengers on a Brooklyn-bound N train seemed confused as a muffled conductor’s voice announced a rerouting along the local line, the R train, starting at DeKalb Avenue. James A. Quinones, 22, who was headed to a friend’s house in Brooklyn to watch the Giants game, said his odyssey “basically went from a 3-stop trip to a 10-stop trip.”

Mr. Seaton, the authority spokesman, said that on Sunday the number of complaints during the weekend had not yet been tallied. “Customers are being inconvenienced, so they are going to complain, and we certainly apologize for that,” he said, adding that most service would return to normal by the morning rush on Monday.

At least some passengers, like Nina K. Pfeffer, 64, expressed forbearance. “They have no choice,” she said of the agency as she waited for the No. 1 train. “They always do work on the weekends — when else are they going to do it?”

Mr. Seaton said that customers concerned about future disruptions can sign up on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Web site, mta.info, for e-mail and text alerts about service issues.

Sunday, at the 96th Street stop on the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 lines, a work train was parked on the downtown local track as transit workers in hard hats toiled to fix the station lights, and painted the platform yellow. Audrey S. Hendler, 52, a marketing consultant, eyed the construction uneasily. “It makes me a little concerned,” she said, noting the masks on workers’ faces. “I’m sure there’s stuff I shouldn’t be breathing. There’s this haze of dust everywhere.”

She took in the chaos, then said, “It’s a total work zone,” and added, with a laugh: “I’ve even had debris fall on my head. It’s great being a New Yorker.”

Photos by Chang W. Lee of the Times.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, NY


Hundreds of buses deployed on the weekend to carry riders affected by scheduled repair work.


Siwani Rana puzzles over a map at an L train station in Brooklyn.

[Q65A]

Good post, Mr. L!
Yesterday, all the NYC area TV stations were running film clips of various subway reroutes, along with shots of emergency shuttle buses and interviews with angry, bewildered straphangers.