on the Broadway Line

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

FASTRACK—MTA New York City Transit's ambitious maintenance initiative—continued its third night along the Broadway Line.  The more than seven-mile long line was shut down from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m suspending service in both directions at   stations in Manhattan. This FASTRACK line segment shutdown continues tonight and concludes at 5 am Friday morning, February 1.

With all train service suspended on a subway corridor on four consecutive nights for seven continuous hours, maintenance workers have an opportunity to perform numerous jobs 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 repair and clean North America's largest rail transportation system.  Like New York City, the subway never sleeps.

The FASTRACK project environment, introduced in 2012, experienced a dramatically lower employee accident rate.  During FASTRACK episodes, the Lost Time Accident (LTA) rate per 100 Employees was 1.38 versus a rate of 2.42 during all other maintenance activities.  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.

When trains were not running on the Broadway Line, the first section opened in 1917, 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 and 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.  Work crews also performed high-intensity station cleaning providing a visible improvement to the station environment.

Major achievements from last night's maintenance agenda include servicing eight switches, and replacing one switch circuit controller box, eight sections of track, 22 track tie blocks and 353 track tie plates.  Maintenance crews also corrected 895 third rail defects, and scraped and cleaned 3,260 linear feet of track under and around the third rail and 80 linear feet of track trough, the space between the rails.  Keeping the subway's physical structure in good condition and clearing the track of debris is also vital to a sound operation as workers installed 100 linear feet of “no clearance signs” and 60 linear feet of handrail, cleared 300 linear feet of track drain and removed 60 bags of silt from a pump room.

Work to make the station environment safer, more attractive and pleasing for customers was also accomplished last night as crews, replaced 128 tunnel lights, 438 station lights, 15 square feel of tactile warning (ADA) tiles, removed 17 way-finding directional signs, and repaired 95 linear feet square feet of rubbing board, the fiberglass extension of the platform edge that is parallel to the side of the train.  In addition, 4,050 square feet of paintable surface was scrapped and 9,100 square feet was painted.

Closed Circuit Television systems received attention as the picture was optimized on four monitors from five cameras and a camera lens and monitor housing glass was replaced at City Hall Station.  At the Canal Street Station, the picture was optimized on five monitors from six cameras and a camera lens and monitor housing glass was replaced while at 23 St Station the picture was optimized on a monitor from a single camera.  At Union Sq-14 St Station, maintenance was performed on two monitors and two cameras.  Elevator and escalator maintenance also took place.

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.

Accomplishments:

Monday, January 28, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013