on the Broadway Line

Monday, January 28, 2013

MTA New York City Transit's FASTRACK maintenance program made its first appearance on the   Broadway Line in Manhattan last night.  This is the last subway corridor that runs the length of Manhattan's Central Business District, to experience this aggressive maintenance and repair blitz.  The seven and a quarter-mile long Broadway Line was shut down from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m this morning, and will shut down for the next three nights through early Friday morning resulting in no train service at    stations in Manhattan in both directions.

Stopping all train service on a subway corridor on four consecutive nights for seven continuous hours gives maintenance workers the chance to perform many tasks on or 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 largest and busiest rail transportation system in North America—a system that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The FASTRACK project environment experiences a significantly lower accident rate by participating employees.  During FASTRACK, the Lost Time Accident (LTA) rate per 100 Employees is 1.38 versus a rate of 2.42 during all other operations.  An LTA is a job-related incident that results in the inability of an employee to perform their duties for at least one working day beyond the day of the incident.

With train service suspended on the more than 83-year old Broadway Line, hundreds of maintenance workers were able to inspect signals and switches, repair and replace track rails and cross ties, clean track floors, perform elevator and escalator repair work, repair water damage, clear drains, and clean stations. They were also able to clear the track-bed of debris, paint areas untouched in years, because they are not reachable during normal train operation.  In addition, work crews were able to clean lighting fixtures, change bulbs, and repair platform edges.  We also performed high-intensity station cleaning providing a visible improvement to the station environment.

Key achievements from last night's maintenance target include servicing six signals, installing 12 sections of track, 122 friction pads, seven track tie blocks, and 218 track tie plates.  Subways repair crews also corrected 572 third rail defects and scraped and cleaned 2,635 feet of track under and around the third rail.  Making repairs to the subway's physical infrastructure and removing debris from the track was also imperative as crews performed pump room maintenance, installed 140 linear feet of handrail, cleaned 500 linear feet of track drain, 1000  linear feet of “no clearance signs” and 75 linear feet of track trough, the space between the rails.  Crews also scraped 2,270 linear feet of track, removed 3,545 bags (7,300 pounds) of scrap and debris and repaired 30 square feet of benchwall, an extension of the station platform that is located in tunnels and used by maintenance personnel and for emergency egress.  In addition, workers replaced 436 tunnel lights, 200 station lights, six platform edge signs, seven handicap signs on the platform, and 10 way-finding directional signs.

Making the station environment safer, more attractive and pleasing for customers is a top priority as workers painted 2,400 square feet of paintable surface area, safety-painted five stairways and replaced 14 square feet of tactile warning (ADA) tiles.  Closed Circuit Television systems equipment also received attention.  At Whitehall St Station, one monitor was replaced and the picture was optimized from 13 cameras on 15 platform edge CCTV monitors.  At 28 St Station and 34 St-Herald Sq Station, the public address system components were inspected, cleaned and tested.   

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 the critical components you never see.  FASTRACK is having a positive impact on service reliability as train delays on subway lines that have undergone FASTRACK maintenance have dropped 4.4% and track fires have declined by 50 %. FASTRACK is improving employee safety and service reliability.