Workers fix subway in 11 days

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.