Taking advantage of the winter break for public school students and the Presidents’ Day holiday for city workers, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority upgrades technology at Subway that it says is more than 80 years old.
The change consists of signal upgrades on lines ‘A’, ‘C’ and ‘E’, which will interrupt service on six lines for a week causing delays.
-Doesn’t it bother so much that this happens for a week, especially when they are not at school?
“No, no, because if it is for good for us, then it is possible, it is better. They do it precisely when there is not going to be much congestion with the children,” said the young user Andrea Quintero.
The agency is modernizing the 8th avenue line with new signals, similar to those of the L and 7 lines.
The upgrades allow the MTA to run more trains closer to each other, thereby reducing wait times.
The work will have a ripple effect on the service of the D, F and M lines, which will also be affected.
Sofía Múnera, a 9th grade student, travels to school with her mother five days a week via the subway and appreciates the usefulness of a train that doesn’t take long.
“Yes, the train is fast and sometimes it takes almost no time to arrive,” said Sofía.
Transfer to lower Manhattan on the ‘A’, ‘C’ and ‘E’ lines will be disrupted until Friday, but service to downtown will remain unchanged, according to the MTA.
The action is part of a mega project of the train system in the capital of the world that, according to reports, has already repaired 10,000 tracks, repaired or changed 11,000 signal components, and inspected 6,000 wagon doors, among others.
In total, they plan to invest 56 billion dollars.
If the figure takes away your sleep, better because this week you should get up earlier.
Users we spoke to said the fixes shouldn’t have taken nearly a century or cost that much.
“Mismanagement. The service so poor that it really provides users. And above all the city budget in bad investments”, said Edgar Vergara.
Only in signal updates the public agency says that 7 billion will be spent.
These are figures that appear to be astronomical for an entity that claims to face a deficit of 3 billion dollars by 2025.
The modernization work is due to finish next Sunday according to the MTA, just in time for more than a million students to return to school after the week of winter break.
