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| Subway workers checked the tracks along the Franklin Avenue shuttle line in Brooklyn. |
The New York City subway, whose closure in the lead-up to Tropical Storm Irene was perhaps the most unsettling element of a prodigious storm preparation effort, is set to reopen on a limited schedule in time for the Monday morning commute, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Sunday evening.
Parts of the underground system will remain closed due to flooding, including all service to the Rockaways in Queens. But nearly all of the subway’s 22 lines, including express and local service, are expected to be restored, Mr. Cuomo said. Fewer trains will run than in a normal morning rush.
Still, other parts of the region’s mass transit network are likely to remain partially paralyzed for the morning commute, including the suburban commuter rail networks that carry thousands of workers to hospitals, investment houses and corner bodegas alike.
The Metro-North Railroad said on Sunday that it would operate no trains at all on Monday on all three of its lines, which serve areas of New York and Connecticut. Its tracks sustained extensive damage from flooding, fallen trees, and mudslides. The Long Island Rail Road will operate partial service on five of its branches, but no trains on four of them.
Although the city escaped a punishing blow from the storm, New York’s ability to return to its usual humming self will rely largely on how quickly its lifeblood mass transit system can recover.
“Transit is the economic life, the cultural life of the city,” said Mitchell Moss, director of the Rudin Center at New York University. “If you don’t have that infrastructure working, you can’t have a meal, you can’t make a living, you can’t get a prescription filled.”
The consequences could quickly spread around the nation: with reduced transit options to the airports, some airlines said they had been reluctant to restore flights into the New York region. Departures will resume at 7 a.m. at La Guardia Airport, and at noon at Kennedy and Newark Liberty International Airports.
Fallen trees and flooded tracks rendered some stretches of the regional rail network impassable on Sunday, and officials said it could be several days before full train service is restored to upstate New York, Connecticut and Long Island, parts of which were hit much harder by the storm than the city.
Speaking to New Yorkers at a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said bluntly, “You’re going to have a tough commute in the morning.”
But he praised the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for its decision to pre-emptively shut down the transit network ahead of the storm, saying the agency had taken the right actions to preserve its equipment and would be better positioned to expedite the recovery.
Several subway train yards were flooded on Sunday afternoon, and workers were trying to pump out water so that trains could run on their proper routes. But there were minimal signs of damage to the overall system, officials said, and the underwater tunnels that were considered vulnerable to the storm were mostly untouched.
Many trains had been removed from low-lying yards in advance of the storm, which made it easier for workers to restore them to service for Monday. The volume of service may still be affected by transit workers’ ability to reach those train yards, given the remaining difficulties with transportation.
It is perhaps a sign of New Yorkers’ impatience that many incorrectly believe the subway system can be restored at the flick of a switch. Before trains can start running again, transit workers must manually inspect hundreds of miles of track, pumping out water and checking on thousands of individual signals. (Waterlogged tracks are sometimes restored with hair dryers.)
There were other signs late Sunday that the system was beginning to stir from its self-imposed slumber. Buses began to crawl out of their depots in Manhattan and the Bronx in the afternoon, and the transportation authority offered free rides for the day. Brooklyn and Queens were expected to have some buses back on the streets in the evening, but blocked and flooded roadways prevented service on Staten Island.
Delta Air Lines rented hotel rooms for several hundred employees during the storm so they could quickly return to work on Monday. The airline is also hiring shuttle buses to pick up employees in Brooklyn and Queens on Monday morning.
Late Sunday, Amtrak officials said they did not know when service in the Northeast Corridor would be restored. Gov. Chris Christie said there would be no New Jersey Transit commuter rail service on Monday except for the Atlantic City line. There will be modified schedules for buses, Light Rail and PATH service, which was scheduled to resume at 4 a.m.
The less-than-severe impact that the storm had on the city led to some skepticism about whether the subways should have been pre-emptively closed, although Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo praised the transportation authority for its actions.
Casilda Johnson, 41, a security guard who had just finished a 26-hour stretch of work at the Manhattan Municipal Building, was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday afternoon. She planned to meet a relative on the other side who was to drive her home to Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights.
“It’s hard for us to get home,” she said, her MetroCard dangling from a lanyard around her neck.
Speaking of the mayor, she said: “He went overboard this time. You can’t shut this big city down. You’ve got to think of the people who don’t have cars. How are we supposed to get to work, and get home?”
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