Thanks to the corrosive effects of Sandy’s storm surge, the tunnel that carries the R train between Brooklyn and Manhattan is currently in the midst of a fourteen-month shutdown. But the salty ocean water also wreaked havoc on the tunnels that shuttle the A, C, 2, and 3 lines between the two boroughs, and that damage will have to be dealt with at some point in the future as well. “We’re letting people know there may be problems,” MTA chairman Tom Prendergrast said last night, according to Capital. “We don’t believe they’ll be the same order of magnitude.”
Prendergrast was hopeful that the shutdowns — which wouldn’t begin until the R train is back to normal — wouldn’t be too lengthy. “Hopefully we can do them with just nightly closures,” he said.
As of now, though, a more onerous closure taking place over a period of months hasn’t been taken off the table, MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg tells Daily Intelligencer. “It’s too early to say for sure, but as Tom said, we don’t think others need the same order of magnitude of work [as the R train’s tunnel],” Lisberg says. “If I could completely rule it out I would, but right now all we can say is we don’t think it will be that bad.”
