Nothing brings New Yorkers a sense of jubilant unity like knowing that the MTA is running ahead of schedule.
That’s the case, at least, for track replacement work at the end of the E train line in Jamaica, Queens, the agency announced on Friday morning.
Standing atop the out-of-service construction site at the Sutphin Blvd.-Archer Ave E train station, MTA Chief Development Officer Janno Lieber detailed the project’s expedience, calling it a “man bites dog” scenario caused in part by pandemic related ridership decreased.
“Because we are able to replace the track now when ridership is low means that we have fewer safety issues in the future and future unplanned disruptions for our customers,” he said.
While the estimated date of completion for the replacement remains as originally planned for this December, Lieber says the two-track outage will conclude by Monday, Nov. 2 and will resume “pretty regular service” on a single track.
He also noted that now more work is being accomplished in conjunction with that December timeline as the MTA has more construction workers on the job now as opposed to before COVID-19 struck.
“This is what we want to be doing with this downtime, now is the time to get more work done when there is low ridership,” Lieber said.
