MTA service on Monday? NYC officials say not likely

New York City's MTA service is not likely to be back to normal by the start of the work week, city officials said Sunday. However, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the approximately 400,000 residents who had to evacuate because of Hurricane Irene could go home Sunday afternoon.

Jay Walder, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told the Associated Press that damage to the city's transit system would have to be fully assessed before service could be restored.

This marked the first total shutdown of New York City's subways, commuter rails and buses because of a natural disaster. Walder added that suspension of service had proved to be the right decision because some train yards were under water.

From GlobalPost's Macro blog: Hurricane Irene — Thinking the unthinkable

A spokesperson at the MTA, Charles Seaton, told the Wall Street Journal he could not give a time-frame for restarting complete service because the process is complicated. The process to put the system back in service is more complicated than stopping it, which took eight hours Saturday.

"I think it's fair to say you're going to have a tough commute in the morning," Bloomberg said, reports AP. "Tough commute tomorrow, but we have tough commutes all the time."

MTA crews began inspecting the 660 miles of subway tracks, 468 stations and 6,300 cars on Sunday morning, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"To bring the subways back on line, workers will have to pump out floodwaters that have pooled on tracks and remove any debris. Any soggy signals will have to be taken apart and reassembled by hand. Once the tracks are clear, drivers will have to return about 2,000 subway cars back to their terminals, a process that amounts to a citywide game of Tetris-like challenge. Last, they will have to conduct several test runs on all of the tracks," it states.

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The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market are expected to open for trading Monday, but a final decision will be made later Sunday.

Bloomberg said residents who moved out of their homes can return as of 3 P.M. Sunday.

Hurricane Irene pummeled New York and area with strong winds and torrential rain on Sunday, knocking out power around the region and flooding some areas of downtown Manhattan. However, the damage to the city was much less than originally feared.