Here’s What Went Wrong On The D-N-R Yesterday Morning
Liena Zagare -
There was one tiny tweet yesterday morning. Apparently the MTA is moving ahead with a year-long project in Sunset Park– replacing structural steel columns and tunnel lighting, repairing steel beams and deteriorated concrete, water infiltration remedy, and ventilator replacement and resiliency– but didn’t indicate to straphangers of just what was about to happen.
The year-long $89 million structural rehabilitation project is expected to be completed by July 2019. “Going forward, N trains will run on the local track in both directions between 36th and 59th Streets in Brooklyn (adding 45th and 53rd Streets to the trip). D and N trains will run express north of 36 Street as normal,” the MTA said.
An already busy Monday morning commute for so many Brooklynites was about to be seriously disrupted.
The official MTA subway tweets say there were “significant challenges in cooridnating the communication surrounding this project.” Right. The trains were listed as having “good service” on the MTA website.
They did apologize, but that didn’t seem to be enough for some straphangers: “So you move ahead with a year-long project without telling ANYONE, including internal departments, and all we get is an apology?”
Here’s what elected officials had to say about these delays:
So… the chaos this AM was due to a TYPO!! in an MTA work order identifying the wrong signal as the end of track work: F4-466 not F4-468.
Good news for D, N, R riders is these massive delays will not happen every day, because this morning’s delays didn’t need to happen at all.
State Senator Marty Golden, who seems to drive everywhere, made a statement just after 7 pm last night:
“This morning’s horrific subway commute is unacceptable and my constituents who were faced with such outrageous delays should know that I have relayed the frustration to MTA leadership.
In this digital age, it is unacceptable that the Transit Authority had such a significant breakdown in communications between management and customers. Furthermore, the massive congestion caused by the routing of the D train onto the express tracks is mind-blogging, leading one to believe this adjustment was made by an amateur.
The MTA has promised this will not happen again throughout the duration of this rehabilitation project, and straphangers on the R, N and D lines can be assured that my staff and I will be monitoring this in the days, weeks and months ahead. Constituents have raised a number of questions to me regarding the project’s impact and we will be further clarification soon.”
