Workers fix subway in 11 days
By
G. Dunkel
New York
Published Feb 13, 2005 6:22 PM
A fire on the A and C subway
lines in Manhattan Jan. 23 destroyed a signal relay room close to the Chambers
Street station. Afterward, the 600,000 people who use those lines daily suffered
major inconvenience. Some spent five extra hours a day commuting to and from
work.
Within hours, authorities and local media tried to pin the blame on
an unidentified homeless person. They claimed the homeless person had started a
fire underground to keep warm and that it had spread to the signal room.
However, after an inves tigation, the Fire Department announ ced Jan. 31 that it
could not determine the real cause of the blaze. (Newsday, Feb. 1)
New
York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) President Lawrence Reuter at first predicted
that it would be three to five years before full service was restored to the A
and C lines. The public response was withering. Three years is longer than it
took to build the Empire State Building.
The next day, Reuter changed his
prediction--to six to nine months for the A line, and indefinitely for the C
line. Calls went up for Reuter and the whole NYCTA administration--which
recently raised subway and bus fares yet again--to be fired. And
promptly.
A similar fire occurred in Brooklyn six years ago. Consultants
told the Transit Authority then what should be done to prevent similar problems:
install fire alarms and video cameras, put in fire-retardant systems, and allow
fire personnel to shut off power to the room from the outside.
The NYCTA
received $591 million in Homeland Security funds, but still hasn't secured 42 of
the 200 signal relay rooms.
Perhaps the bosses felt their program to
prevent tourists from taking pictures on the subway, or their ad campaign
instructing people to tell a cop if they see an unclaimed shopping bag, were
suitable substitutes for making minimal improvements to the 70-year-old signal
relay rooms.
The NYCTA's plan for relay room upgrades is scheduled to last
until 2021.
The only reason the signal relay room at Chambers Street
wasn't completely destroyed was that a train operator noticed the fire and
called it in.
After the fire, very limited service was provided using a
manual procedure. Signal maintainers got to work cleaning up the relay
room.
These workers came up with a plan: to use signals that were replaced
on the D train line a while ago, molded to new specifications at a machine shop
in Queens. They took some circuits from a control tower that were not essential
and wouldn't jeopardize safety.
All service was shut down on the A and C
lines beginning Jan. 28. Then 12 to 15 signal maintainers worked 12-hour shifts
for the next 53 hours to build a new signal system. When they finished, off-peak
service on both lines was running at 100 percent, and rush hour service was at
80 percent.
The workers restored service in 11 days using their ingenuity
and deep knowledge of the signals.
Even Reuter had to acknowledge that
the signal maintainers had designed a safe signal system on the fly. (Newsday,
Feb. 2)
In most media accounts, the contributions of the workers to
restoring service was minimized or ignored, along with the complete failure of
the bosses to plan a safe, reliable and secure system.
The workers make
the system run every day, and they could also manage it much better than the
suits who run around making wild statements and ignoring the real needs of the
people.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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