New York City’s subway system shut down for the first time in 115 years early Wednesday for an unprecedented planned nightly closure to disinfect trains — and to clear out a homeless population who’ve been sheltering underground during the coronavirus crisis.

At 1 a.m., the stations were shuttered to riders, and filled with a small army of cleaners, cops, social workers and nurses.

“We’re the city that never sleeps and we’re proud that the manifestation of that is that the subway runs 24-7,” Pay Foye, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said two hours before the shutdown at the Manhattan terminus of the Q line.

“That’s been the case since 1904. This will mark the first planned closure of the subway in 115 years.”

“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” he said. “The reason we’re taking this unprecedented action is to protect the safety and public health of our customers and our employees.”

New York City Transit Authority interim president Sarah Feinberg said the nightly pause won’t abandon essential workers, however. “We’ve built bus routes around them,” she said.

And the homeless, she said, will have “30 locations at the end of the line terminals” to find shelter and services. “It’s something we started nine months ago. We hope that these folks take us up on the offer of services.”

At the start of the shutdown, 20 homeless people were kicked out of the station in Flatbush, Brooklyn. NUThe last A-train arrived at 207th St. at 1:17 a.m., and about a dozen homeless people were greeted by a half-dozen outreach workers and 20 cops, who directed them to shuttle buses or the street.

Not all passengers were pleased about the shutdown either.

“I have no choice. I’m an essential worker. I’m a bakery worker. I need the subway,” groused Yoshi Hashimoto, 60. “Usually I finish around 2:30 a.m. but I had to change my schedule. This is ridiculous. Some people have to work.”

But Eric Holloway, purchase manager at a nonprofit in Brooklyn who takes the train to get to his Inwood home said the nightly shutdown is necessary.

“I’ve seen the rise in homeless on the subway and it’s gotten progressively dirtier,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity to clean between those hours. It’s a pause for the subways so they can reset.”

Hundreds of police officers were deployed to clear the trains of homeless people, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said on Tuesday.

“This is something that’s never really been undertaken to this scale, I expect it to be fluid and we will learn from tonight and as we go forward, try to develop a system that’s as efficient as possible to get the job done with the minimum amount of officers.” -  Shea told reporters. 

“It will disrupt another decades’ old pattern of homeless folks — street homeless folks — staying on the subway all night in a way I think is unhealthy, unfair,” he said. “We want to disrupt that, we want to get them help, we want to be able to be there with outreach services to get them to shelter.”

Shea said the nightly police deployment to the subways would be a work in progress.

“We’ll learn from tonight’s experience and see if we have to adapt and if we can do it with less or have to add more,” he said.

Last week, Gov. Cuomo ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to start the subway closures, saying deep cleanings were needed to prevent the spread of coronavirus as the city and state begin eyeing a return to parts of normal life.

“Whoever heard of disinfecting a subway car?” Cuomo said at an Albany press conference. “Well, now you learn. You have to disinfect subway cars.”

Source: https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-subway-closure-nypd-homeless-20200505-sfxlyv3c2fcdbm3ira4mrzhoi4-story.html