Service "C"ut

It's never good when there's a fire, but it's even worse when it cancels train service indefinitely. That's the situation on the C line of the NYC Subway system. The A train is also affected, which means that 400,000 daily users have to find alternatives due to cancellations and overcrowding. My wife was none too pleased about the inconvenience as she relied on the West Side service to get to work.

Reuter said suspending the C is a "long-term problem" that could take an estimated three to five years to fix and cost "several millions of dollars" because new equipment has to be built from scratch.

The MTA says that it could take years to restore the service, which begs the question. If they were able to rebuild the 1,000 foot long section of track destroyed by the WTC for the 1 and 9 lines within 18 months, including signal systems, why will it take years to restore the signal system damaged by the fire at Chambers Street in Manhattan that was apparently caused by a fire started by a vagrant and spread to the relay room. It is time for the MTA to investigate new off the shelf technologies that could replace the older equipment in order to speed the restoration of service.

It begs the question why the relay room was not better protected from fire damage if it could result in a systemwide breakdown. This is not just a transportation question, but an infrastructure security question that deserves to be investigated. A minor fire that spread to a relay room could halt train service indefinitely. That is unacceptable.

Immediate fixes should be the installation of fire suppressant systems in all similar relay rooms, so as to minimize the chances of the equipment being irreparably damaged.

Also, these areas should be better secured. If a vagrant could inadvertently cause this kind of damage, what would happen if a terrorist purposefully sought to cause the damage?

That's a scary thought.