The New York subway system, generally open 24 hours a day, was closed early Wednesday morning for clean-up work as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus.
The famous “subway”, which has been running with reduced hours since the end of March, will be paralyzed between 1 and 5 in the morning from now on.
Police officers escorted passengers to Brooklyn’s Coney Island station, the last for multiple lines, warning them they will have to take buses to reach their destinations. Workers with bottles of disinfectant then boarded the wagons.
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The night service had already been reduced, but the total pause allows a deep cleaning and the evacuation of homeless people.
The New York Police Department has dispatched 1,000 officers to protect New York City’s 472 subway stations as fewer than 200 may be physically closed.
Gangs of police and nurses are being dispatched to outlying stations to remove the homeless in order to allow for cleanup, department chief Terence Monahan said.
New York City routinely has the busiest public transit system in the country, averaging over 5 million passengers, but with the coronavirus and people’s tendency to stay home, traffic has declined sharply, more or less by 90%.
