April 19, 2016 Staff Report
Crowded 7 train straphangers will get a little relief this fall.
The MTA will provide two additional round trips on weeknights from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. starting in the fall. The agency had mentioned the plan at a Sunnyside town hall meeting early this month, and formally announced it on Monday.
The additional rides will address the challenges posed by ever-growing subway ridership coupled with ongoing MTA construction work, according to the agency.
The 7 train is experiencing record high ridership of about 525,000 per weekday, MTA NYC Transit President Ronnie Hakim said at the town hall. Meanwhile, due to construction, weekend closures between Long Island City and Manhattan will continue until the end of 2017.
“We always want to better serve our customers by strengthening service whenever we have sustainable resources to do so, but we also must balance providing that service with the critical maintenance work we need to run trains safely,” Hakim said in a statement Monday. “Our biggest challenge now is juggling our record ridership demand all week long while maintaining a system that stays open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Implementation of the service additions depends on crew and schedule changes that will be finalized in the coming months; the agency may re-evaluate the service changes as needed once they are underway.
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Because of the acceleration of commercial and residential development in Hunters Point, Long Island City, Flushing and possibly Sunnyside, which could result in more riders taking the 7 train service, the MTA needs to finish replacing the older R62 subway cars with the newer R188 subway cars, renovating and retrofitting the Steinway Tunnel and replacing the older fixed-block signals with the newer moving-block signals via CBTC.