Oct 30, 2009 12:56 pm US/Eastern
Parade + Marathon + MTA Disruptions = Nightmare
MTA Weekend Maintenance Blitz Disrupting Service
Halloween Parade & NYC Marathon To Exacerbate Already Slow Weekend Commute
Reporting
Jay Dow
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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A subway conductor looks out onto the platform at the Times Square subway station Oct. 9, 2005, in New York City.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
It's been an ongoing process, but this Halloween weekend, the Metropolitan Transit Authorities' planned subway disruptions could be a little more painful.
Nearly every subway line will be affected by service changes, and on top of that, the New York City marathon and a Halloween parade will exacerbate the nightmarish commute.
What do you get when the Big Apple hosts the nation's largest Halloween celebration and one of the world's most popular marathons on the same weekend? A driver's nightmare. Transportation officials are getting ready to close roads to vehicular traffic all over the city.
But don't expect the city's mass transit system to pick up the slack. The MTA's $11.2 billion capital rebuilding program aimed at upgrading and maintaining the subway system will impact 17 out of the city's 20 subway lines, starting at midnight.
The service advisory includes work on everything from flood mitigation measures to station rehabilitation, and track cleaning to general maintenance. The big question is, given everything that's planned for the Halloween weekend, why not put the maintenance on hold? MTA officials say unfortunately, a by-product of a 24-hour, 365-day a year system, there is no good time to do the necessary work.
"If we don't work on the railroad, it won't work. Actually, it begins to fail and leads to the conditions that plagued the system in the 80s, which produced rampant derailments, fires, etc. that crippled the system. We're not going to go back there," said Paul J. Fleuranges, MTA Vice President of Corporate Communications.
Transit advocates say taking a majority of the subway offline is clearly inconvenient, but vital.
"The system has been under-maintained for decades. The repairs needed are huge," said Gene Russianoff of the Straphanger's Campaign.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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