(CNN) For the first time in its 115-year history, New York City deliberately shut down its entire subway system Wednesday morning.
The reason: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) deep-cleaned to prevent spread of the coronavirus
"Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures," MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said late Tuesday.
The New York City subway has been shut down because of weather: Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 . During the blizzard of 2015, the system canceled passenger service, but equipment trains kept running.
But this is the first planned shutdown.
The cleanings will be done on a nightly basis, from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. When the cleaning is done, every single subway car will be disinfected.
"This is critical to ensure the health and safety of our employees and customers," said Foye.
To accommodate the loss of train service, the MTA is adding several hundred buses to its typical overnight routes to make sure essential workers have access to transportation.
Subway officials warned New York residents that there may be hiccups in executing the unprecedented closure.
"If this were a normal moment, we would have planned this for months," New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg said.
Subway ridership during the coronavirus crisis is down 90% from pre-pandemic times. But about 11,000 people still have used the subway from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. daily during the pandemic, the MTA said.
The pandemic already had forced changes to service. MTA has installed vinyl shields on buses to further separate passengers and drivers, and it is checking more than 3,500 employees a day for fevers.
CactusBoyScout on May 6th, 2020 at 14:54 UTC »
Some important context... It's surprisingly complicated to shut down the subway system here because it's been designed for 24/7 use from the start. NYC has the only major 24/7 subway system in the world.
So we don't actually have enough train yard space for all the trains... because usually some portion of the trains are moving 24 hours a day.
When Sandy hit us, they shut down the system too, but they had to just leave trains in empty subway stations because they wouldn't all fit in the yards. That made restarting again a complicated dance, because the tracks were effectively blocked all over the system and our subway lines share tracks all over the system. So one stopped train somewhere could block as many as 4 entire subway lines.
Imagine if your city had to shut down all car use but there wasn't enough parking for all the cars so people just had to abandon them on the highways. Now try getting everyone moving again at the same time! It's quite a coordinated effort.
JanitorKarl on May 6th, 2020 at 13:41 UTC »
So shutting down every morning now from 1 -5 a.m. for disinfecting stations and cars.
Veleda380 on May 6th, 2020 at 12:47 UTC »
Better late than never I guess