New York Subway Repairs Border ‘on the Edge of Magic’
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
Inside a sprawling Manhattan command center, a board that detects subway activity by sensor had gone quiet. No trains were running; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had shut the system down as Hurricane Sandy approached.
Suddenly, the screens inexplicably crackled to life.
Something was moving down there. And it was not the trains.
To the subway’s chief maintenance officer, the storm’s encroaching waters were even more obvious. He was forced to flee with his flashlight from the South Ferry station in Lower Manhattan as the waters charged over the platform and up the terminal stairs, chasing him like an attack dog.
It has been less than two weeks since the most devastating storm in the New York City subway system’s 108-year history. Seven tunnels beneath the East River flooded. Entire platforms were submerged. Underground equipment, some of it decades old, was destroyed.
The damage was the worst that the system had ever seen. And yet, the subways have come back — quicker than almost anyone could have imagined.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/nyregion/new-york-subways-find-magic-in-speedy-hurricane-recovery.html
Amazing what Union Labor can accomplish!
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