Yesterday was a day of staying inside and taking a few walks to assess the Hurricane coming down. Living in Washington Heights, across from the tallest natural point in Manhattan meant that except for the lights flickering once nothing happened. Yesterday morning I did walk down to the subway entrance at 190th Street and the elevators were at their upper landings but turned off. I feel very fortunate compared to other residents of low-lying areas. I just heard Joseph Lhota announce limited bus service will be restored at 5pm today and regular bus service will be restored tomorrow. All service will be completely free. The subway though is in disarray with Salt Water leaking into every East River Tunnel and corroding tracks switches. It sounds like service will be restored on a piecemeal basis. I’ll definitely be out tomorrow (probably on my bike) seeing how the bus system is taking up the slack from no subway service. Once the subway damaged is known (and a timetable is developed) I bet that the structure of the bus system will be changed with buses covering discontinued subway service and less service in duplicate outlying areas.
The most important thing and reason the subway system will reopen faster than it might was shutting the system down preemptively. Lhota mentioned that every bus and piece of subway rolling stock was not damaged from the storm by being moved to higher ground. This will make service much easier to restore with nothing damaged. Had the subway shut-down later or tried to run during the storm there would have been much more extensive damage particularly of rolling stock.
Now we must wait for the timetable of restoration. I think this photo of the closed tunnel at Broadway to the 191st Street Station-(4 Photos) with its Next Train times display on, but simply showing the time sums up the subway being closed:
I have an update I’m all set to release (of lines without service soon) probably this evening.