Daily Archives: January 21, 2019

Cops on lookout for subway groper at Union Square

Forcible touching suspect

Cops are looking for a man who grabbed a woman’s behind on a southbound 4 train on Friday, January 4. It was around 8:40 a.m. when, as the train was leaving Union Square, the man groped the 37-year-old victim. She managed to get a photo of the suspect on her phone before she got off the train at the Brooklyn Bridge station. The suspect remained on the train.

He is described as being black, 60 to 65 years old and 5’8″ to 5’9″ tall. He was last seen wearing a gray knit cap, a dark, colored hooded sweater and a green jacket.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at nypdcrimestoppers.com, on Twitter @NYPDTips or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.

MTA says shutdown officially off despite lack of board vote

Straphangers waiting for the L at First Ave. (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

By Sabina Mollot

Two days after the board members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority held an emergency meeting on the alternative L train repair plan, albeit without holding a vote on a subject, the MTA announced that the shutdown was definitely not happening.

After reiterating that the agency had been presented with a plan for the damaged Canarsie tubes that would allow for less disruption for riders, it said in a press release last Thursday that “the total shutdown of both tunnels and all service scheduled for April 27 will not be necessary.”

The MTA added that the construction schedule and new contracts were expected to take several weeks to complete.

While no dollar figure was mentioned, the MTA also said the cost would not likely be higher than the original plan and that the repair time estimate remained at 15-20 months, as the governor had predicted.

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28th Street 6 station reopens

A floral mosaic pattern adorns the inside of the newly-renovated Kips Bay subway station. (Photo by Maria Rocha-Buschel)

By Maria Rocha-Buschel

The 28th Street 6 station reopened on Monday evening after being closed for renovations since last July.

The station was expected to reopen around the same time as the 23rd Street F/M station at Sixth Avenue, which did come back into service on the last day of November, the walls of the newly-renovated station adorned with tile mosaics of Weimaraners in collared shirts, but the repairs for the 6 station in Kips Bay needed to be more extensive than the agency initially expected.

A representative for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority told Town & Village that the delay in reopening 28th Street was due to significant deterioration to the station’s steel column structure that needed to be fixed. Customers were alerted through social media, station signage and digital signage that the station was expected to re-open by mid-January.

The MTA announced the station’s reopening on Twitter this past Monday, noting that the agency had repaired the platform’s structural steel and concrete, replaced the platform edges and repaired the stairways. The MTA also added new digital wayfinding and customer information screens to the station.

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