Two Astoria subway stations will close for eight months beginning Monday as the MTA begins renovations there.
Both the 30th Avenue and 36th Avenue subway stations will close as part of the MTA’s debated Enhanced Station Initiative — which involves long-term closures for aesthetic upgrades but no service improvements — to 33 subway stations.
The two above-ground stations of the N and W lines will get treatments similar to Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge Avenue and 53rd Street stations, the first two redesigned stations to have reopened, including improved signage, new artwork, glass barriers and LED lighting, and granite flooring on the station’s mezzanine. The stations will also get new glass, as well as wire mesh platform windscreens.
Crews also will make structural repairs to the 100-year-old stations, including the replacement of the staircase that leads from the street at 30th Avenue and Newtown Avenue to the Astoria-bound platform of the 30th Avenue station.
Elected officials and advocates plan to rally Monday morning outside the 36th Avenue station to protest the MTA’s closures, citing the absence of plans to make the selected stations compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. A similar rally was staged at the reopening of the Bay Ridge Avenue station earlier this month.
As backlash over the issue of accessibility has grown, the MTA announced during the Bay Ridge Avenue station reopening that it would spend $40 million to make the nearby 77 Street and Bay Ridge-95 Street stations ADA-compliant.
