Some overnight L train service to be suspended starting Monday
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Final preparations are underway before service changes for the L train begin Monday night.
The MTA will suspend weeknight service between Lorimer Street in Brooklyn and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.
Trains will stop running at 10:30 p.m. and service will resume at 5 a.m. The outages will last until April 26.
The MTA originally planned to completely shut down the L train for months, but the agency is now working with a new method without fully shutting it down.
The planned closure was in order to fix the 7,100-feet of the Canarsie Tunnel's tubes that sustained damage during Superstorm Sandy. This would have affected nearly 250,000 of the city's commuters.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said his experts proposed a "new design" for the tunnel restoration project.
"It uses many new innovations that are new, frankly, to the rail industry in this country ... With this design, it will not be necessary to close the L train tunnel at all, which would be a phenomenal benefit to the people of New York City," he said.
Instead of closing the Canarsie Tunnel and pulling out the benchwall containing cables damaged by Sandy, which would force the full closure, the MTA will now hang the new cables using a "racking system," which can be mounted on side of the tunnel's walls. The "racking system" would be wrapped in a protective fiberglass material, and sensors will allow the MTA to know if the rack moves.
The MTA will not remove the old benchwall, containing the old corroded cables, because doing so would require tunnel closures.
The upcoming suspensions are so that crews can install the proper signal equipment needed to operate trains on a one-track system when the rehabilitation project starts.
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