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Photo Courtesy: NYC Transit/ Lenny Wiggins

Last night, MTA New York City Transit's continued its fourth round of the FASTRACK maintenance program on the Seventh Avenue subway line between 34 St-Penn Station and South Ferry and Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr, Brooklyn. This round of FASTRACK on the lines runs nightly through 5 a.m. Friday, October 19. As FASTRACK requires the partial closure of a subway line to train service on four consecutive nights for seven continuous hours (10 p.m. to 5 a.m.), workers can work on and near the tracks without having to stop work every few minutes while a train moves through the area. This is a safer and more efficient way to maintain and clean the vast New York City subway — a system that never stops running.

With no trains running along the Seventh Avenue line last night, more than 800 subway maintenance employees were able to inspect and perform maintenance work on signals, switches and associated components. Work crews were able to continue their efforts replacing rails and cross ties and scraping track floors, thereby removing muck and debris. They were also able to work in subway stations scraping, priming and painting surfaces that are not reachable during normal train operation. Maintenance workers took the opportunity to enhance customer safety by cleaning lighting fixtures and changing bulbs, resulting in a brighter station environment. Edges of platforms were repaired and ceilings, platforms and walls of some stations received high-intensity cleaning. While improving train performance and operating efficiency, these maintenance activities also provide a more comfortable station environment.

Significant accomplishments from last night's maintenance effort include servicing 19 signals, replacing a switch cable, installing three sections of track, 24 track tie blocks and 123 track tie plates and regauging track in the vicinity of Wall Street station. Workers also corrected 428 third rail defects and scraped and cleaned 705 feet of track under and around the third rail. Making repairs to the subway's physical infrastructure and clearing the track of debris was also a key goal as crews sealed 13 leaks, and cleaned 14 emergency exit locations, 1,150 linear feet of track drain and 450 linear feet of track trough, the space between the rails. In addition, repairs were made to the benchwall, an extension of the station platform that is located in tunnels and used by maintenance personnel and for emergency egress.

With a focus on customer safety and convenience, 62 tunnel light bulbs, and 182 fluorescent tubes and 51 compact fluorescent bulbs in stations were replaced. At Clark Street station, the rubbing board, the vertical edge of the platform that is parallel to the side of the train, was repaired. Closed Circuit Television systems received attention as maintenance was completed on five monitors and eight cameras at South Ferry station. Repairs were also made to an escalator.

How this impacts service?

Reliable service - service you can depend on to get you to where you need to go when you need to get there - requires regularly scheduled maintenance to critical components you never see. Pumps, signals, track, and power are just some of the vital system equipment we are focusing on so that we can continue providing our riders with train service that is safe and reliable.