This week began an unusual MTA experiment as service was shutdown on the 4 and 6 trains from 10pm to 5am between Grand Central Station and Atlantic Avenue. It's part of an extraordinary new approach to line maintenance that is being tested called FastTrack. Usually, this sort of work would be spread out over a month or longer as track workers dodged regular trains and passengers suffered slow overnight service. Now they are hoping for quicker more efficient repairs in a much shorter amount of time by shutting down an entire section of a line.
Tonight is the last night of this first FastTrack experiment and the reviews from the MTA have been positive. The amount of work accomplished in those four nights by more than 700 workers has been staggering. However, straphangers were not happy about having to take 3 trains instead of 1, as reported on CBS-2. Still it seems this sort of repair makes so much more sense in saving time and money while completing the necessary repairs on what is usually a 24/7 system.
