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| South Ferry (1) Train Station Fix Could Take Up To 3 YEARS!!! (1199193) | |||
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South Ferry (1) Train Station Fix Could Take Up To 3 YEARS!!! |
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Posted by Gold_12th on Thu Jan 17 23:50:37 2013 It could be three years before the South Ferry subway station at the tip of lower Manhattan, heavily damaged in superstorm Sandy, is fully restored to service, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials now say.Even before it launches a rebuilding effort estimated to cost $600 million, the MTA must decide whether to move some of the electronic equipment of one of its most vulnerable stations to a higher elevation, to guard against future floods. Thomas Prendergast, the president of the MTA's transit division, told reporters in December that it would likely be at least a year before the bidding and construction on South Ferry could be completed, but the agency now believes it will be substantially longer. Some intermittent subway service could return, however, before the station is fully finished. South Ferry, which reopened in 2009 after a $545 million renovation and expansion, was inundated by the storm surge from the harbor on the night of the Oct. 29 storm. It filled with 14.5 million gallons of water, a depth of 80 feet from the track bed to the station's mezzanine. MTA officials say they are hoping to put out contracts for the station's rebuilding sometime later this year. They are expecting the heavy construction work—such as replacing salt-corroded signal systems—to take another one to two years. The MTA's rebuilding estimate includes $350 million for physical repairs to the station, where workers already have rebuilt a tile wall that was swept loose by flooding; $200 million for replacing signals; and $30 million for third-rail equipment. The water has been pumped out of South Ferry, but on Thursday afternoon evidence of the flooding was everywhere, as Wynton Habersham, the MTA's chief electrical officer, walked the station's muck-drenched platform. He ducked into a signal-relay room at the end of the platform, which had held about 600 electromechanical relays, switch boards and circuit breakers. Almost all of them were ruined by the corrosive, brackish water that poured in from the harbor. "A simple cleanup wouldn't suffice" to restore the station, which served 14,000 No. 1 train riders per day, including many coming from the Staten Island Ferry, Mr. Habersham said. The MTA will have to replace hundreds of relays and thousands of feet of wiring in the South Ferry complex alone, he said. Before the agency does so, engineers will have to decide if they will try to rebuild the relay rooms on higher ground, where they will be less vulnerable to flooding. That would force the MTA to change the specifications and layout of the equipment it is replacing. "If we decide to just harden that room and make it like a submarine, which is not likely to be the case," said Mr. Habersham, his department could simply replace what has been ruined—but moving the equipment would require more planning. "If it's relocated to the park upstairs, then we'll do it up there," added Mr. Habersham, in a reference to Battery Park. South Ferry was destined to be a complicated site for rebuilding. The structural concrete box of the station already sits mostly below the water table; Mr. Habersham compared it to the "bathtub" that forms the foundation of the World Trade Center. Three subway lines cross above the station's roof—the No. 4 and 5 lines and R trains toward Brooklyn, and the loop track of the old No. 1 station, which is now being used to turn No. 1 trains for the trip back uptown. But the difficulties of restoring the hardware of the station also reflect a problem facing the entire subway system: the vastly diminished reliability of the parts of the system that survived. While some equipment subjected to corrosion was quickly refurbished and brought back into service, that equipment is now much more likely to fail—and to fail sooner than it might have without exposure to floodwaters. Since the MTA restored service on the R train from adjoining Whitehall Street through its tunnel into Brooklyn on Dec. 21, equipment in that section of the line has failed at least once a day, including again on Thursday morning, Mr. Habersham said. Corrosion has had effects both visible and hidden. In the relay room at South Ferry, a subcontractor scrubbed clean the steel pins that held the relay boxes in place. Days later, the lichen-colored corrosion spots had returned in force. "That's why the manufacturers felt you have to just get rid of it," Mr. Habersham said. "There's not much you can do with it once it's been exposed." To cope with breakdowns, the signals division has been forced to staff the Montague Tube, which carries the R train under the East River, 24 hours a day since it reopened. Elsewhere, scores of workers have been reassigned to manually move track switches and realign trains in the yards that were damaged by flooding. In the process, they have been racking up overtime hours and working in dangerous conditions, MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said. The MTA estimates it will cost $700 million to repair signals systemwide, the largest single line item in its preliminary $5 billion damage estimate. ---http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324468104578248352448657848.html |
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