MTA to Far Rockaway: Drop Dead

 

 Gothamist

The MTA will shut down A train service in the Rockaways for five months starting in January, disrupting the commutes of more than 9,000 daily riders.

Beginning on Jan. 17, the A train won’t run between Howard Beach-JFK Airport and the last stops of the line, either Rockaway Park-Beach 116 St. or Far Rockaway-Mott Ave. The Rockaway Park Shuttle trains will also stop running to and from Broad Channel.

The MTA says the lengthy suspension of service is necessary to fortify infrastructure against extreme weather. The viaducts and bridge that carry trains across Broad Channel need “major upgrades to help protect the line from future storms,” the MTA wrote in an announcement.

The agency noted that much of the work is in response to extensive damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. It took seven months to restore service to Rockaway after the storm in Oct. 2012.

Free bus shuttle service will be available along the affected stops. The announcement gave no indication that NYC Ferry service from Rockaway would be expanded while the upgrades are underway.

Far Rockaway resident Quazel Trower said the shutdown will upend his life.

“There’s only one train that goes to Far Rockaway. It’s not like two trains, three trains. It’s literally one,” Trower, 27, said. “Taking the shuttle bus always makes your commute longer than it needs to be.”

Trower said his typical commute into Manhattan already takes more than an hour.

In a statement, MTA Deputy Chief Development Officer, Mark Roche, said that the plan was consistent with what has been done in the past for the L train Canarsie Tunnel project and G line modernization work.

"This next phase of the A train resiliency work has undergone internal and external expert review to weigh alternate delivery and construction methods,"he said. "It was determined that the plan presented is the best option for getting this work done as quickly as possible, with the least impact to commuters.”

So if congestion pricing started, this would have happened anyway. Nice of the MTA to drop this right when the weather got chilly, it's really no different how they obfuscate reasons during train delay announcements. 

 

There's a delay on the A train because of delays building flood resiliency infrastructure

 

THE CITY

Hurricane Sandy isn’t done messing with subway riders in the Rockaways just yet.

A decade after extensive damage from the October 2012 superstorm knocked out A train service between Howard Beach and the peninsula for more than six months, remaining Sandy-related repairs along the forked line are running with delays and getting pricier, MTA records show.

The cost of federally funded resiliency upgrades to stations, bridges and viaducts along the tracks that links the peninsula with the rest of Queens is now forecast to hit $467 million — up $60 million from an earlier goal, according to MTA documents.

The remaining work is among the lingering remnants of a storm that caused billions in damage to the subway system and specifically wreaked havoc on the coastal section of the A line and the Rockaway shuttle.

“It was a horrible storm and I saw what it did to my community,” said Thomas Atehortua, 23, as he waited Thursday for an A train at Broad Channel. “So I’m not at all surprised that the damage was so impactful and long lasting along this line.”

While the MTA last year wrapped up Sandy-related repairs inside the last of nine under-river subway tunnels damaged by the storm, reopened the flooded South Ferry complex in 2017 and has come up with ways to protect 3,500 street-level subway openings from excess water, the work in the Rockaways is still years away from being completed.

“It is a complicated project,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO, told THE CITY after the agency’s October board meeting on Wednesday. “It also needs to be carefully coordinated with the community because it has impacts on A train service in and out of the community, which is obviously important to that waterfront community.”

Lieber said the agency has already poured $150 million into Rockaway Line resiliency efforts, including erecting a protective seawall to guard against storm surge along Broad Channel, protecting critical station infrastructure and restoring full service in May 2013, just months after Sandy swamped tracks and bridges.

Take the A(xe) train

 

NBC New York

It was a frightening scene after a man began swinging an ax onboard an A train Friday, police said.

According to the NYPD, police received a 911 call of a person acting erratically and swinging the weapon onboard an A train, heading to Rockaway, shortly after 4 p.m.

"It must’ve been a harrowing call for our 911 operator to hear & relay - a report by a straphanger of a man swinging an axe on an A-train. Thankfully with our enhanced deployment, District 23 officers were at the ready, intercepting the moving train & taking the man into custody," NYPD Transit police tweeted Saturday along a photo of the large ax that appeared to be a couple of feet long.

Police responded and canvassed the area before arresting Obadiah Lashley, 27, at Beach 67 St Station. Lashley was apparently still on the A train when he was apprehended.

It is unknown what charges, if any, Lashley faces or if he has an attorney. It is also unclear how many passengers were on the train or if anyone was in immediate danger.

Any data on how many people bought a car after this incident? 

Two homeless people murdered, two other people wounded from stabbings on the A train from Queens to Manhattan

 

QNS 

  Detectives are investigating two deadly stabbings on the opposite ends of the A line in Queens and Manhattan within a span of two hours between Friday night and Saturday morning.

Police sources said they are investigating a possible link between the two cases as well as a pair of additional stabbings that occurred on Feb. 12-13 at the 181st Street station on the A line in Washington Heights. The victims in those cases are expected to survive their injuries.

During a Saturday afternoon press conference at One Police Plaza, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that the NYPD would add 500 officers throughout the subway system immediately to increase safety. Detectives, meanwhile, are working around the clock looking for possible suspects and are seeking tips from the public.

The first victim, an unidentified man, was found stabbed while seated on board A train at the Mott Avenue station in Far Rockaway, Queens at about 11:20 p.m. on Feb. 12.

Officers from the NYPD Transit District 23 and the 101st Precinct discovered the man on a bench inside one of the train cars with stab wounds to his torso and neck.

Responding EMS units pronounced the victim dead at the scene. Police have not yet disclosed his identity, pending family notification.

Two hours later, cops in Manhattan responded to the fatal stabbing of a woman on board an A train that stopped at the West 207th Street in Inwood — the line’s northern terminus — at about 1:21 a.m. on Feb. 13.

The discovery was made during the nightly overnight closure period of the entire subway system, when train cars are disinfected to guard against the spread of COVID-19.

Cops from NYPD Transit District 3 and the 34th Precinct, while responding to a 911 call, found the 44-year-old woman under the seats on board one of the train cars with several stab wounds to her body.

EMS units also pronounced her dead at the scene. The NYPD has withheld her identity, pending family notification.

NY Post 

The “A-train Ripper” is in custody, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post on Saturday night.

The knife-wielding madman was wanted in a gruesome subway spree that left two homeless people dead and two others slashed along the A train line, and was nabbed in Upper Manhattan, the sources said.

His shoes were still splattered with his victims’ blood when he was taken into custody — and he was still in possession of the bloody knife, one source added.

The yet-named suspect was in custody at the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, the sources said.

The bloodshed sparked an outcry for safer subways, and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea responded, announcing a “surge” of 500 additional cops for the department’s Transit Bureau to be deployed across the city immediately.

The spree began Friday morning, not far from where the alleged stabber was caught, authorities said.

More heavy metal debris is falling from elevated tracks, this time in Sunnyside and Richmond Hill

CBS NY

 In what’s become an alarmingly commonplace occurrence of late, a small piece of rusty metal plunged from the elevated 7 train track and crashed into a car in Queens on Friday.

Officials say the hunk of metal dropped onto the trunk of a car on Queens Boulevard and Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside, causing a dent.
The man whose car it hit was surprised to see how much damage the metal inflicted. The incident comes after two separate incidents in the past month where debris fell from the 7 train tracks in Woodside.
No one was hurt, but cars were damaged every time debris fell.
“This is outrageous! More rusty metal debris falling from the 7 train, this time in LIC. Look at that dent— a person would have died!” Tweeted Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer. “I sent a letter to [the MTA] last week demanding an expeditious inspection of the 7 train structure. What is the hold up?!”

NBC 4 NY

MTA workers were seen inspecting a section of tracks Monday afternoon as they looked into whether metal that apparently crashed into a car's roof in Queens was debris from elevated subway tracks.

The alleged incident occurred Monday when a woman behind the wheel heard a thump, pulled over, got out, looked up and apparently found damage on the roof of her car.

The woman believes it was a piece of metal that fell from the elevated tracks along Liberty Avenue and 115th in Richmond Hill.

She says the debris rained down as a train passed above.

However, the MTA says it looked into Monday’s incident but did not find “anything abnormal at the scene.”

In a statement, the MTA said: “We obviously take any report like this seriously and sent a team to investigate. We didn’t find anything abnormal at the scene – there was no debris on the ground, the track was inspected from both sides and all components were found to be secure. Our systemwide inspection of all elevated track structures continues.”

 

Falling debris from elevated tracks has damaged at least three cars in the last month, including a car impaled by a wooden beam. MTA president Andy Byford said the agency is looking to other cities, including Chicago, for help on maintenance tips for elevated tracks.

"We are reaching out to sister agencies — a classic, obvious example being Chicago because they operate a lot of overhead structures — to see if there is anything that they do additional to what we do," Byford said.

Wait, our transit system needs to be advised from other city's transit authorities to basically clean up after themselves? Too bad Felix Unger is a fictional character and deceased, because he would have been an excellent consultant for the MTA.

Train delays are the longest and happen most frequently on transit lines starting at Eastern And Southern Queens Stations

 Queens Eagle

 If you’ve commuted to or from Queens by subway this year, odds are your train has been delayed, a new report from data-scraping tool ReadyPipe shows. Using data from the MTA’s own website, the web-scraping platform determined that the A, F, N, E trains are among the city’s top-10 most-delayed subway lines.

“A negative surprise was the fact that every morning there are at least five routes that had a delay at some point,” Chad Horner, a data analyst with ReadyPipe, told the Eagle. “The MTA can’t make it through that time without a bunch of things going wrong.”

 

The A train, which takes straphangers from the Rockaways, Howard Beach and Ozone Park into Brooklyn and Manhattan, was delayed more than 11 percent of the time throughout the entire month of January. During the weekday rush hour (between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m), nearly one in every five A trains experienced delays.

The F train, which serves Queens from Jamaica-179 Street to 21 Street-Queensbridge, was delayed more than 10 percent of the time in January. The N and the E trains were delayed over 6.5 percent of the time and three of every 10 trains experienced planned work.

In fact, there wasn't a single weekday morning in January that didn't see at least one delay during the morning rush, according to Horner’s findings — the fewest number of lines delayed in a single morning was five. 

On the bright side, at least we are not getting poisoned during our daily commutes. Yet.