Posted on 01/24/2005 7:24:53 PM PST by neverdem
Two of the city's subway lines - the A and the C - have been crippled and may not return to normal capacity for three to five years after a fire Sunday afternoon in a Lower Manhattan transit control room that was started by a homeless person trying to keep warm, officials said yesterday.
The blaze, at the Chambers Street station used by the A and C lines, was described as doing the worst damage to subway infrastructure since the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. It gutted a locked room that is no larger than a kitchen but that contains some 600 relays, switches and circuits that transmit vital information about train locations.
The A line will run roughly one-third the normal number of trains - meaning that riders who used to wait six minutes for a train might now have to wait 18 minutes - while the C train will cease to exist as a separate line, at least for the time being. The C will be replaced by the V in Brooklyn. Long waits and erratic service are likely to be the norm for 580,000 passengers who previously relied on the A and C each weekday.
Riders on the West Side of Manhattan and in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of East New York and Ocean Hill-Brownsville will find the available trains more crowded, and will likely seek alternate subway lines, crowding them as well.
"This is a very significant problem, and it's going to go on for quite a while," said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit. He estimated it would take "several millions of dollars and several years" to reassemble and test the intricate network of custom-built switch relays that were destroyed in the blaze, which officials believe began when the homeless person - who has not been found - set fire to wood and refuse in a shopping cart in the tunnel about 50 feet north of the Chambers Street station.
The flames quickly spread to a series of electrical cables. "Those cables short-circuited as a result of the fire, causing arcing as well as fire inside a relay room," said a Fire Department spokesman, Michael R. Loughran.
The fire underscored the fragility of the antiquated mechanical equipment that keeps the subways moving and of the sensitive nodes where that equipment is stored. Officials said they believed that there were only two companies in the world that were able to repair the signals. One is based in Pittsburgh, and the other in Paris.
The fixed-block signaling system has been in use since the New York subway's inception in 1904. The transit agency has invested $288 million on its first computerized signaling system, scheduled to make its debut on the L line in Brooklyn and Manhattan in July. Computer-based train operation has been a goal of transit planners for decades, but since 1982 the transit agency has focused its capital spending on basic maintenance.
Dozens of signal relay rooms like the one destroyed on Sunday are scattered throughout the 722-mile subway system, and it is impossible to fireproof them, Mr. Reuter said. Firefighters had to forcibly remove the bolts when they arrived at the locked relay room on Chambers Street, but the locks did nothing to prevent the fire from entering.
Until Wednesday, there will be no A service between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. at Spring, Canal and Chambers Streets and at the Broadway-Nassau station in Manhattan and at the High Street station in Brooklyn to allow workers to perform critical repairs. During those hours, the A will operate on the F track between West Fourth Street in Manhattan and Jay Street in Brooklyn. Supervisors will manually operate signals using two-way radios and observation.
The transit agency said in a statement that there were "no plans for the restoration of C service in the near future."
An expert on the city's subways expressed amazement that a single fire in a confined space could have such a long-lasting impact. "It seems astonishing that a single signal room would be so central to the operation of the line that it would take five years to recover from," said Clifton Hood, a transit historian at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y. "That's about as long as it took to build that entire line of the IND."
The first segment of the Independent Subway System, of which the A and C are a part, opened in 1932. The city's three subway divisions were unified in 1940. Professor Hood noted that four stations that were closed after the Sept. 11 attack were reopened in a year.
Yesterday morning, the first commute since the blaze gave a taste of the irritation that awaits riders in the days and weeks to come. "All I can do is wait here and hope for the best," said Ana Reyes, 51, a medical receptionist from Boerum Hill who had waited half an hour for the A train at the Jay Street station in Brooklyn. "Nobody tells you anything, so I just follow everyone else. If a train comes, I'm getting on it, and I don't care where it goes."
Johanna Jainchill contributed reporting for this article.
Can't blame Mario for that one. It was under a court order as the result of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU.
Actually Mario fully supported it---He never even tried a real legal challenge.--anything that was done was half-hearted at best.
The ACLU never got the law that permitted the insane or those that might endanger themselves or others struck down---but Mario didn't even allow the state MH department to use it to keep some of the sick in the hospital.
He had an out--and refused to use it
I don't know where on W.77th you're headed, but the 1 or 9 trains (Seventh Ave. local) should take you to 79th @ Broadway.
Why take the A and switch when he can take the 1/9 directly from Penn Station?
avoid the crush----I try to avoid crowds myself.
The A is *always* more crowded than the Seventh Avenue trains. And now, service has been slashed to 1/3 of what it was, so it's going to be that much worse.
Personally, I'm going to avoid taking the A and instead walk the extra blocks to the E whenever possible.
Also, there's quite a bit of distance between the 7th Ave & 8th Ave trains in Times Square. Quite a hike.
Before I was hurt---I walked wherever possible (my family said I was cheap, LOL)
Used to have relatives on 83rd and 3rd---would walk all the way to Grand Central--take the 7 to Main street then walk 2 miles to the house. GREAT exercise!
As for the A---it didnt seems to be as crowded as it used to be, and I'm a bit more sensitive to crowds that I used to be.
"Also, there's quite a bit of distance between the 7th Ave & 8th Ave trains in Times Square. Quite a hike."
a little stretch of the legs! ;-)
I guess I'm used to doing things the hard way....
Yeah. Especially in the Summer.
BTW, just heard on news 88 that they will have the repairs done in 9 months....that's a bit better than 4 years, isn't it?
Did someone's job get threatened?
I like walking, too. But I was trying to keep things simple for our friend from out of town. I usually don't give the shortcuts that require some knowledge of how to get around here to NYC newbies. ;)
MUCH better! Then again, after they got all subway stations (except the 1/9 that was right under the WTC) back to work 14 months after 9/11, I didn't think it would take *that* long for this.
LOL
I'd hate to have been the head of the MTA when the 4-5 year bombshell hit the mayor's office!
His ears musta melted off!
*GRIN*
I always loved that tune:Take the A Train
thanks for the file :-)
No, it was a HOMELESS CHEMIST that did it.
Troll.
Why the nasty reply?
Anyone can stage an arson and then plant a "shopping cart full of crap" as a red herring to throw off the investigators.
Now if they had found the "homeless person" along with the cart...
So now it's sarcasm to post a theory of a crime here on FR?
G-D Rest your Dad.....
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