Monday Was a Mess for B and C Riders. Here’s What Crews Found Under the Tracks.

Trains are moving normally again after a repair job that turned Monday into a slog for anyone trying to get downtown from the Upper West Side. It took nearly 100 workers and an around-the-clock shift to get there, and it started with something crews weren’t expecting to find.

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The work happened at the 81st Street–Museum of Natural History station, where crews found cracks underneath the trackbed during a scheduled weekend track replacement. The trackbed is the layer of support the rails sit on, and it has to stay stable under trains that weigh hundreds of tons, so the cracks meant the area needed shoring, meaning temporary structural support, before anything could run over it normally again. Those workers stayed on the job from Sunday into Monday evening, according to the MTA, filling the affected area with ballast, the crushed stone that holds track in place and drains water away from it, and laying 300 feet of new track.

For riders, that meant no downtown local service between 125th Street and 59th Street–Columbus Circle for most of Monday. Downtown B and C trains ran express through the Upper West Side, blowing past every local stop. The B was pulled out of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx entirely and rerouted onto the M and then the Q, terminating at 96th Street on the Upper East Side, amNewYork reported. A and D trains ran with delays. The agency told anyone who normally takes those lines in Manhattan to use the 1, 2 or 3 and leave extra time.

The MTA said earlier Monday that it was hoping to have everything back by Tuesday’s morning rush. Full service returned just after 8 p.m. Monday, NBC New York reported, well ahead of that.

One thing the MTA hasn’t addressed since the work wrapped is what comes next at the site. When the agency announced the extended service changes on Sunday, it described the maintenance planned for Sunday night and Monday morning as temporary, with permanent repairs scheduled for a later date. Monday night’s announcement that full service had been restored made no mention of permanent repairs, and no date for any has been announced. Crews had already been at the 81st Street station for about a week as part of a larger track replacement project when the cracks turned up.

For now, the trains are running. Riders can check mta.info or the MTA app for service updates.

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