NEW YORK—The coming weekend will be the first of 13 consecutive weekend service suspensions on the No. 7 line from Queensboro Plaza to Times Square, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced Thursday.
No. 7 trains not will run between those two stations from 11:45 p.m. on Friday evenings until 5 a.m. Mondays.
The service suspensions will take place on the following weekends: Dec. 28–31, 2012, Jan. 4–7, Jan. 11–14, Jan. 18–21, Jan. 25–28, Feb. 1–4, Feb. 8–11, Feb. 15–19, Feb. 22–25, March 1–4, March 8–11, March 15–18, and March 22–25, 2013. The E, F, N, Q, Sand free shuttle buses will provide alternate service.
The schedule remains the same for all 13 weekends except from Feb.15-19—when services will be suspended from Friday evening to 5 in the morning Tuesday.
Riders can take detours on the E, F, N, or Q lines to travel between Manhattan and Queens. There is a free shuttle bus to take riders between Vernon Boulevard–Jackson Avenue and Queensboro Plaza. The Q line will also be extended to and from Astoria–Ditmars Boulevard during the day.
The 42nd street S shuttle will run overnight throughout the weekend in Manhattan.
New Signal System
The service changes are a result of MTA’s new signal system, known as the Communication Based Train Control (CBTC). This project will take years to complete. This automated train control system operates using wireless communication that will increase capacity, give more frequent rides, and eventually lead to the future installation of countdown clocks that give customers audio and visual train arrival messages.
“We realize this will be an inconvenience, but the work is necessary to modernize and improve the reliability of the 7 line,” MTA said in a statement.
The service change is also a result of the continuation of the No. 7 line’s 1.5 mile extension from the Far West Side of Manhattan. This is will create a convenient path to the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
The $2.4 billion project is estimated to finish in June 2014.
Unhappy Riders
Council member Jimmy Van Bramer will hold a press conference Friday morning to protest a plan that will pause a MTA service for 13 weekends.
“Community members, local businesses, and cultural organizations are outraged over the length of the outages and the perpetual lack of communication from the MTA to transit riders,” his office issued in a statement. “The large cultural community in Long Island City is especially hard hit as an industry that relies on weekend attendance.”
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