MTA resumes Queens 7-train service this weekend only thanks to snow

I assume that the No. 7 will also be running on Easter weekend (April 3 and 4), or am I being naive?

The stairs were in horrible shape! Two employees were nice and warm in the booth.

Of course, this means that the MTA will make us pay for this weekend by extending the service outage beyond the March 18 weekend!

I cannot wait to ‘grade’ the 7 line! Service has declined sharply. The trains are not running well even when service is up during the week.

The steps coming out of the 6 at 23rd and Park were covered in slush and snow around 9am this morning. It would take less than 5 minutes to shovel that off. Clearly nobody at the MTA cares about the quality of service they provide. Since it’s a state run agency they get away with being lazy, incompetent, and unproductive on a level that would put a private company out of business. Is there any chance they will ever get better? Can Bloomberg take over and run it like a real business?

but it’s just so incompetent and short-sighted. someone could fall and easily sue/settle with the MTA and get loads of money. and they are complaining about how cash strapped they are and can’t pay the $300k to reduce the fan noise…

The 7 is not running now at noon Friday between Grand Crentral and Qboro plaza.
Switch problems in the snow?

MTA website says no disruptions to the #7, but it might be outdated (surprise!). Anyone take it lately?

Union workers only take care of what their job descriptions require.
It would be awesome if someone in the booth would have take the initiative to clean the steps, but this would be frowned upon by the workers who are paid to shovel the steps. Unions protect workers, which is fine, but they are also a great source of waste. It’s a catch-22 and probably unsolvable.
If you have personal initiative, you’re probably better off working in private industry.

NYC native, that probably the best case against unions. All of these artificialy created jobs are paid for by all of us through higher taxes, higher fares, and reduced service. Only in the bizarro world of unions do you have 2 people in a booth doing nothing joined by a crew of snow shovelers (probably ferried around the city in trucks at considerable expense) to do work that could have been done by either of the first two. As a teenager working in fast food, I was a cashier, but often found myself shoveling snow, or cleaning a bathroom or two. I guess I could have said that it wasn’t my job description, but then I would have been fired and they would have found someone else to do it. This country is heading for a economic disaster as cities and states are under a crushing burden of benefits promised to these folks who do less in a week than you probably do in a day in private industry. Unions are in many respect like small scale bankers who looted the store as its burning. They don’t care that they are bankrupting the city, just as long as they get theirs.

Really #16? NYS alone probably has about $200B in pension and employment benefits obligations. Its small scale larceny repeated thousands of times over years, but larceny on the scale of the Wall Street bailbout nonetheless. If you work in private industry you generally don’t get these benefits. (Who gets a pension these days? You are luck if your company matches a 401K contribution. some union have negotiated a pension and a matched 401K that is guaranteed. i.e. if the market goes up you win, if the market goes down, you don’t lose anything.) You are subject to layoffs and salary freezes, but if you get a goverment job, you have a job for life. If you try to take any of this away they unions scream bloody murder and claim that they don’t care what shape the economy is in or what compensation exists outside or organized labor. Each year they shake us down for more money in exchange for doing less work. There are some serfs out there, yes, but there are plenty who will retire years ahead of you or I and live very comfortable lives on the taxpayer nickle – assuming of course the state can remain solvent under the crushing burden of these obligations.

Lavish union pensions and benefits are the biggest drag on this city and state.

As for the 7 train disruptions, they should be done in warmer weather when the days are longer, so that the work can be completed in fewer overall days, and it would be easier to walk to the E or the V, or just stand outside for the shuttle. And they should run 2 shuttles per hour to Grand Central. The MTA should not be taking down the main means of transportation for this part of the area without implementing better measures to deal with it.

Really interesting guys, but can someone tell me when the maintenance will be competed? What is the last weekend that we will be stranded in LIC?

#22 It’s basically roughly 10 weekend of work. I think they’ve only done 2 so far because this weekend was a bust. So 8 more weekends probably unless we get more snow interference. It sucks.