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Accomplishments:
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

MTA New York City Transit's ambitious maintenance initiative—FASTRACK—began its second round this past Monday night along the Seventh Avenue Line from 34 St-Penn Station to South Ferry and to Atlantic Av, Brooklyn.  FASTRACK entails 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.).  This round of FASTRACK on the  lines runs through 5:00 a.m. Friday, April 13.  Because no trains are running along the line segment, 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 New York City's vast subway—a system that runs around the clock.

With no  trains running along Seventh Avenue Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, more than 800 Transit employees were able to inspect and perform maintenance work on signals, switches and associated components. Workers were able to replace rails and cross ties and scrape track floors, thereby removing muck and debris. 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 an pleasant station environment.

Major accomplishments from last night’s maintenance effort include servicing three switches, 18 signals, removing 2,645 bags of debris (63,100 pounds) and scrapping 720 feet of track.  Workers also installed eight running rails (sections of track), 60 linear feet of handrail, and cleaned 2,200 linear feet of “no clearance” signs.  In addition, nearly 2,000 feet of track was serviced by the vacuum train, 470 tunnel lights and 40 square feet of tactile warning (ADA) tiles were replaced.  Also, 365 third-rail defects were corrected and more than 30 tie blocks were replaced.  To allow for a smoother ride, 250 track plates and more than 730 friction pads were installed.  At Brooklyn’s Borough Hall Station, 4 platform edge signs were replaced.  Infrastructure crews grouted leaks at several locations and performed ‘sound and tap’ work along 435’ linear feet of structure and repaired 87 defects. On elevators and escalators, 12 smoke detectors were replaced and smoke heads on three elevators were cleaned and inspected.  Maintenance crews were also able to replace on Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) camera and two monitors, while the picture quality was optimized on seven cameras.

FASTRACK was credited for the quick cleanup of a water main that broke last week disrupting subway service between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Thousands of gallons of water entered the tracks of the  trains around 2:30 a.m. Thursday, April 5 when a 12-inch water main installed in the late 1880s fractured under West Broadway between Warren and Murray Streets (between Chambers St and Park Place Stations). Transit workers quickly responded and cleared the tracks, and service resumed shortly after 8 AM. About seven inches of water had accumulated and reached the top of track rail but, was swiftly removed by external pumps and track drains that were recently cleaned as part of the previous FASTRACK which shut down service on the  lines for four weeknights in February. "Those drains were all recently cleaned, so they were handling water amazingly," said Senior Vice President of Subways Carmen Bianco. "All the hard work put into FASTRACK several weeks ago, paid off.

How this impacts service

Reliable service – where you can depend on getting to where you need to go when you need to get there – requires constant care and attention to critical components you never see.  To improve safety and reliability, pumps, signals, track, and power are just some of the vital system components we are focusing on repairing and maintaining so that we can continue to provide our riders with safe and reliable service.

Accomplishments: Monday, April 9, 2012