The Subway en route to economic recovery

The metro of The Big Apple begins its path towards the new normal from Monday 22, when it will return to operate 22 of the 24 hours of the day, giving a truce so that the economy finds its route to growth and job creation.

And although we still have to travel on the Subway again during overnight, in these times of pandemic it is better to see the glass half full than to notice it half empty for the almost 6 million travelers who, before the virus, were transported on trains on weekdays , connecting s us 472 stations from Brooklyn to Queens, or El Bronx, passing through Manhattan.

The cost to the economy of this transportation interruption is incalculable, because “the City that never sleeps ”Had to turn off even the subway due to the coronavirus that still has us in trouble, with almost 700 thousand infected and more than 28 thousand deaths in New York alone.

But after almost ten months of closures for four hours at night we are happy to know that soon the system will be back in full swing to help boost and rearrange the economy, reopen businesses and reactivate hundreds of jobs lost due to the pandemic.

For now, with just two hours of pause in the service for cleaning and disinfection of the wagons, we hope that soon the subway will return to its routine the 24 hours, since in March the fun returns to the entertainment centers and how it is supposed to We will win the battle against the coronavirus, in April we will need the system to return to amusement parks and businesses.

End the pandemic and the return of the subway are necessary to reactivate restaurants, bars or sports stadiums and companies whose employees and customers espe They must get out of that deep sleep due to the lights off and the confinement left by the virus in the heart of New York.

And for that opening it is also necessary that the city hall achieve the purpose of accommodating homeless people who roam the subway, generating risks and a feeling of insecurity for passengers.

The New York subway as one of the oldest transportation systems in the world, founded in 1904, begins its path to permanent service that until now had only been interrupted by storms and hurricanes or during the attacks of 9 / 11.

But now it needs to regain its dynamism to return to normalize the service 24 / 7 as we are used to.

(The author -who uses a pseudonym- is a New York-based journalist)