on the

 

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

The second night of MTA New York City Transit's ambitious maintenance effort —FASTRACK— continued last night and early Wednesday morning along the Lexington Avenue Line between Grand Central-42 St and Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr, Brooklyn. FASTRACK entails the partial closure of a subway line to train service on consecutive weeknights and for seven continuous hours (10 p.m. to 5 a.m.). This round of FASTRACK on the lines runs through 5:00 a.m. Thursday, September 6. Because no trains are running along a designated area of a subway line, maintenance crews can work on and near the tracks without having to stop work every few minutes while a train moves through the area. This is safer environment for employees and a more efficient way to maintain and clean New York City's massive underground transportation system that runs around the clock.

With no trains running along Lexington Avenue, more than 800 Transit employees were able to inspect and repair signals and switches, repair and replace track rails and cross ties, and scrape track floors, resulting in the removal of dirt and debris, Workers were also able to perform escalator and elevator maintenance, repair water damage, clear drains and clean stations. In subway stations, paintable areas not reachable during normal train operation were scraped, primed and painted. Crews also took the opportunity to clean lighting fixtures, change bulbs and repair platform edges while performing high-intensity station cleaning. These maintenance activities improve train performance and efficiency while also providing a pleasant station environment.

Major accomplishments from last night's maintenance effort include repairing a leaking air line for a track switch, servicing two switches and 13 gap fillers (movable platform extensions where the curvature of the platform creates a significant gap between the platform and subway car door). The night's work also included removing 1,310 bags of debris, resulting in the removal of 42,250 pounds of scrap and debris. With an eye toward keeping the tracks and third rail in good condition, workers installed 251 track tie plates, 55 track tie blocks, corrected 348 third rail defects, and cleaned, scraped, and bagged 1,655 linear feet of debris under and around the third rail. In addition, maintenance crews installed 75 linear feet of handrail, repaired 25 leaks, cleaned the bench wall (elevated walkway along the side of tunnels used by maintenance crews) and continued cleaning track drains. Also, with employee safety in mind, workers installed 150 linear feet and cleaned 1,000 linear feet of "no clearance signs."

For a more aesthetically-pleasing and safer subway station environment, 4,050 square feet of paintable surface was scraped, 1,100 square feet was primed and painted and 20 square feet of concrete platform surface was repaired. At Bleecker St and Spring St stations, crews replaced monitors that are part of the stations' Closed Circuit Television system (CCTV) and the systems at both locations and at Astor Pl station were optimized for clarity. To keep elevators up and running, maintenance was performed on three machines on the Lexington Avenue line.

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.

Accomplishments:

Tuesday, September 4, 2012