NYCT Rockaway Branch to reopen May 30

Full subway service on the A line to the Rockaways in Queens, N.Y., will resume on May 30, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority twittered Thursday, May 16, preceding a formal announcement by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Billed by MTA as part of its “Fix & Fortify Sandy Recovery Work,” service restoration to New York City’s beachfront communities, severely impacted by Superstorm Sandy last October, essentially restores full service for New York City Transit subway lines throughout four boroughs, as well as the Staten Island Railway in its namesake borough. Only the new South Ferry Station, in lower Manhattan, remains in limbo as the MTA decides how, or even if, to restore the station.

MTA established an H train shuttle service on the Rockaway peninsula last November with some bus connections to the rest of the subway system to span Jamaica Bay, which separates the Rockaways from the rest of Queens.

Cuomo said the MTA has worked in the past seven months to rebuild 1,500 feet of washed-out tracks, replace miles of signal, power, and communications wires, and rehabilitate two stations that were completely flooded. MTA crews also installed a corrugated marine steel sheet wall along Jamaica Bay to protect the track against future washouts and ensure the line is ready to handle future coastal storms, though MTA officials quietly acknowledge such a fix is not a cure-all.

“Superstorm Sandy devastated the entire MTA network like no other storm, but the MTA did a remarkable job of restoring service following the storm and at the end of this month, the A line in the Rockaways will be up and running,” Cuomo said in a statement.

“The good news today is the Rockaways are back,” said MTA Interim Executive Director Thomas F. Prendergast. “The other good news is we’re working diligently to make more permanent repairs and we’re not going to stop there, we’re going to go further to see what we can do to harden the system using even better and more efficient technologies.”