Marc A. Hermann/Metropolitan Transportation Authority The old South Ferry “loop†station was called back into service after Hurricane Sandy flooded the current station. More than five months after Hurricane Sandy ravaged South Ferry station, blowing a hole in the subway map in Lower Manhattan, service will return to the stop on Thursday for the first time since the storm, officials said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said on Wednesday that trains would arrive in time for the morning rush, restoring the final stop on the No. 1 train and a critical connection for Staten Island Ferry riders. South Ferry has been among the system’s last lingering service gaps, along with A train service in the Rockaways, which the authority hopes to restore by the summer.
But when riders return to South Ferry on Thursday, they will not be entering the same hub that was ravaged last fall. That station, opened in 2009 at a cost of over $500 million, remains perhaps years away from being restored entirely, with an estimated rebuilding cost of $600 million. The authority has turned instead to the station that was replaced at South Ferry â€" a century-old stop at the same location, which was decommissioned four years ago.
“We can’t have the impacts that people are experiencing today take many months,†Thomas F. Prendergast, the authority’s interim executive director, said in February, as the authority weighed possible short-term options to restore service. “That’s just too hard.â€
Riders have been forced to use either the R train at Whitehall Street, the No. 4 or 5 at Bowling Green, or to walk to Rector Street for the No. 1.
Less than four weeks later, the authority said it planned to reopen the old station. Logistical challenges remained, including the reintroduction of the station’s old “five car rule†â€" dictating that only passengers in the first five cars could exit.
While many stations were enlarged in the 1940s and 1950s to accommodate 10-car trains, the length and configuration of South Ferry’s platform prevented any change.
Though the authority has used the old station’s loop track for work trains, and as a turnaround point for No. 1 trains since the storm, the station itself had been largely ignored since it was decommissioned.
In recent months, the authority worked to install a new entrance, new lighting, and a closed-circuit television system, with monitors over the platform, so crews could have a fuller view of their trains. The platform’s curvature prevents conductors from seeing all cars at once.
