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Oh, terrific. That explains why the A train took such a very long time to get from Penn Station to Broadway-Nassau this afternoon. Plus I noticed bright lights in a control room next to the Chambers Street station and about 20 or 30 hardhats in there working on something.

The train before ours was evidently having problems, so they dumped all the passengers at the Broadway-Nassau station--last stop before Brooklyn--and our already crowded car was overwhelmed with people trying to get on. I was very glad to be getting off there, finally.

I'm really looking forward to half-hour delays every time I take the subway downtown. For five years?

Since Giuliani left office, the homeless people have been moving back into the subway tunnels and stations. Now we see what the results can be. Frankly I expected this to happen earlier, because our new mayor is a cretin. But this is not a good sign.

Maybe it was some poor NYer who needed a ciggy real bad, and had to go into the bowels of the subway system for a few puffs. I understand it is a capital crime these days in NYC to light up anywhere.

I doubt it will take 3-5 years to fix the problem. They totally rebuilt the section of 1/9 tunnel running underneath the World Trade Center in a little over a year.
They'll probably run the A on the F tracks to Brooklyn late nights and weekends to expedite any necessary track work.

In Manhattan itself, there's plenty of redundancy. The 2 and 3 also run from Penn Station to the Fulton St-Broadway-Nassau complex. The E is still running full service on the local tracks to every station but Broadway-Nassau. It's the people who have less choice of lines out in Queens (and to a lesser extent, Upper Manhattan) who will be most affected. It will also make the fairly easy link from Downtown to JFK less reliable.

I doubt this was a terrorist attack. If it was, it's not very effective. It didn't kill anyone. And there are obvious workarounds to anyone who knows the NYC subway system. Other sections of the NYC subway system have been closed for various reasons in the past (the Union Square crash on the Lexington Avenue line comes to mind), and the city has managed. Heck, two of the four Manhattan Bridge tracks were closed for repairs for over a decade, yet trains were rerouted and Brooklyn managed just fine.

You can try taking the E to the WTC stop (yes, I know there's no longer any WTC!) and then just walk east on Fulton.

Another option is the 2 and 3 trains.

I seriously doubt it's going to take 5 years to get back to normal. It was 14 months after 9/11 that they got every single station (except the 1/9 stop that was below the WTC) back in pre-9/11 shape.