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Your weekend subway commute is about to get significantly more annoying.
Beginning this Friday night, the MTA is launching five straight weekends of major construction that will disrupt service on the 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 trains, sending riders on detours, suspending entire lines and making Lower Manhattan a lot trickier to reach by subway.
The work begins Friday, July 24, and continues every weekend through Monday, August 24, with service changes taking effect from 9:30 pm Friday until 5 am Monday each week. Weekday service won't be affected, but if your summer plans include Battery Park, Coney Island or just about anywhere else that requires one of these lines, you'll want to plan ahead.
The biggest headache will be on the 1 train, which won't run south of 14th Street during the construction windows. That means there will be no weekend 1 train service between 14th Street and South Ferry for the next five weekends.
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The 2 train is also getting a major haircut: instead of running between the Bronx and Brooklyn, it will operate only between Eastchester-Dyre Avenue and 34th Street-Penn Station, cutting off service to Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. North of East 180th Street, 2 trains will temporarily replace 5 train service. Meanwhile, the 3 train won't run at all during any of the five affected weekends.
To keep riders moving, the MTA is reshuffling service elsewhere. The 4 train will replace the 3 between Crown Heights-Utica Avenue and New Lots Avenue, while 5 trains will continue running between Wakefield-241st Street and Flatbush Avenue-Brooklyn College. In Brooklyn, they will make the local stops normally served by the 2 and 3 and continue running express along the Lexington Avenue Line in Manhattan.
According to the MTA, crews are replacing aging track switches in Lower Manhattan, the critical pieces of infrastructure that let trains move from one track to another. Many of the existing switches have outlived their useful lives, and replacing them now is intended to reduce future delays and improve reliability.
"We're replacing antiquated switches to reduce delays, improve service reliability and deliver a smoother ride," NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said in a statement.
It's not exactly a fun way to spend five weekends, but it's work that's tough to complete while trains are running. Focusing repairs on consecutive weekends will allow crews to finish the project faster and minimize disruptions to weekday commuters.
The good news? The pain is temporary. Regular weekend service will resume on August 29, just in time for the unofficial end of summer. Until then, do yourself a favor before heading underground: check the MTA app or mta.info before you leave. Your usual train may not be waiting for you.