MTA suspends overnight subway service indefinitely

AN EMPTY SUBWAY CAR. PHOTO BY ABSOLUTEWADE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

By David Brand

Beginning May 6, the MTA will indefinitely suspend subway service between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. to enable cleaning crews to sanitize train cars, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the MTA announced Thursday. 

Bus service will continue and the MTA will contract with for-hire-vehicle services to shuttle essential workers to and from their jobs, the agency said.  

The overnight shutdown in one of the world’s only round-the-clock transit systems comes days after Cuomo called cars filled with homeless New Yorkers “disgusting” and the city ordered more police and outreach teams to remove people sleeping on trains and in stations. The decision is the latest development in an escalating series of measures that effectively drive people experiencing homelessness out of the transit system at night. 

MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said the “unprecedented” shutdown will allow for daily deep-cleaning

“This is an unprecedented time and that calls for unprecedented action to protect the safety, security and health of our system for customers and employees,” Foye said in a statement.

But advocates for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness condemned the decision to close the trains at night. Coalition for the Homeless Policy Director Giselle Routhier said people sleep in subway cars because they lack safe alternatives due to city and state policy failures.

“Homeless New Yorkers are sleeping on the subway because the City and State — nearly two months into this crisis — are steadfastly refusing to offer them somewhere better to go,” Routhier said in a statement. “Punitively closing the subways and sending in more police will only make things worse. What is actually needed are safe, private spaces where maintaining social distancing is possible.”

In a statement announcing the closure, the MTA cited a 90 percent drop in ridership during the coronavirus outbreak. Overnight service will resume “when customer demand returns, and innovative and efficient disinfecting techniques have been successfully deployed systemwide,” the agency said.

The move to suspend overnight service is without local precedent, said Ridgewood Historical Society Director Steve Monte and official Queens historian Jack Eichenbaum.

Both historians said they were not aware of another systemwide nighttime shutdown, though each cited 24-hour disruptions that involved labor disputes.

“Only when we had strikes,” Monte said. “But I’m not aware of it being suspended for any other reason.”

Monte specifically cited a 12-day strike that began on the first day of Mayor John Lindsay’s tenure in 1966. Transit Workers Union employees also went on strike for 11 days in 1980 and two days in 2005. 

Subway service resumed just a few hours after the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We’re the only one that’s 24 hours,” Eichenbaum said. “This shutdown, period, would be equivalent to what every other system is already doing.”