Sorry Jay, No Paint For You
In a story that comes as to no surprise to me nor should it you, the MTA will spend over $100M on a station rehabilitation which somehow does not include repainting. The station in question is the Jay St station which has been under extensive renovations for months as anyone who reads the “Service Diversions” would know. Gary Buiso of The Brooklyn Paper has more:
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is spending $110 million to rehabilitate the bustling Jay Street subway station, but it is content to treat the hub’s entryway as an ugly stepchild.
The transit agency said this week it will not repaint the peeling ceilings on either exit on the west side of Jay Street between Willoughby Street and Myrtle Avenue, leaving a moonscape of potentially toxic paint chips raining down.
Straphangers were disgusted by the news.
“They need to fix it — it’s not healthy,” said commuter Anjell Bowers. If Jay Street were Wall Street, it is unlikely the ceilings would be left to deteriorate, she added.
“But Wall Street is where the money is.”
Commuter Norman Chan agreed.
“If this was an apartment building, this would be a major housing violation,” he charged. “You wouldn’t rent a place that looked like this.”
Transit spokeswoman Deirdre Parker insisted that the areas in question are safe, noting that the ceiling was re-painted in the 1990s with a non-lead based paint.
But even so, the agency regards the situation as dangerous: Above-ground station cleaners are instructed to sweep the courtyard area with wet cloths and a HEPA vacuum — which contain specialized filters to trap dangerous lead particles, which can cause serious health problems.
Click here for the complete report.
This kind of stupidity irks me to no end. Why spend millions of dollars to do a station rehabilitation yet choose to not repaint areas that clearly need them? One does not need an Ivy-League education to understand why this is beyond ridiculous. However leave it to the MTA to do such a thing which leaves you scratching your heads & wondering who makes these decisions. I will applaud them when they do well but I will equally trash them when they do something stupid like this!
xoxo Transit Blogger
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[…] class structure point. This is the same agency spending over $100M to rehab Jay Street yet will not repaint badly needed areas in the station as part of the work. I just wanted to put it out there as I could […]