For four straight weeknights beginning Monday, January 9, a small army of MTA New York City Transit workers will perform more than 300 maintenance tasks in stations and tunnels along a segment of the Lexington Avenue 4, 5 and 6 Line stretching between Grand Central-42nd Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Service will be suspended in both directions between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Workers will perform a variety of tasks that can be accomplished much more safely and efficiently in the absence of train service. Maintenance workers will take this opportunity to inspect track, repair or replace track components, and perform power and signal inspection and maintenance tasks. Maintenance of way crews will also clean and scrape dried mud from the roadbed, which will help ensure signal reliability.

In stations, we will also be able to do spot painting, repair platform edges, wall tiles and lighting in addition to performing power washing at some of the closed stations. By shutting down a section of a subway line, we can work more efficiently and at less cost, in many cases taking days to complete tasks that would normally take weeks.

“All of this is work that must be done to maintain the safe, smooth and efficient operation of a subway system that runs around the clock, seven days a week. However, by suspending service along line segments, workers can work on and near the tracks without having to interrupt that work every few minutes while a train moves through the area,” said NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast.

Fifteen stations on the 456 line will be closed to entry from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. Uptown 456 service will be available at Grand Central-42nd-Street. Substantial alternate service is available via parallel subway corridors, though riders are advised to allow extra time for their trips.

Work will proceed along 6.7 route miles of subway, which translates to nearly 20 miles of track.

Our next FASTRACK overnight closure will be on the Seventh Avenue 123 line between 34th Street and Atlantic Avenue from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for four consecutive nights beginning Monday, February 13 and ending at 5 a.m. Friday, February 17.

Platform Conductors and Traffic Checkers will be positioned at key hubs including Grand Central – 42nd St, Atlantic Ave-Pacific St and 14th St – Union Square to hand out information and answer riders’ questions. In addition to these efforts, we’ll also be using www.mta.info to provide daily updates on the previous night’s work. When FASTRACK is complete, NYC Transit will perform an assessment and make a report available to the MTA Board for review.

When a line segment is closed at night, customers can expect to add 20 minutes to their usual travel time. Alternative transportation options will be detailed in announcements and posters on trains, in stations and on selected buses; brochures will be available in both English and Spanish.