We originally ran this video, which we found quite compelling on Friday, before lunarpages–the web hosting company from hell–decided to delete GL before a server switch was complete, taking us down for nearly a day and wiping out several days of posts…but we digress. We’re reposting this vid here because we think the situation it shows sucks that much. It comes from a reader in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens who shot this at 3:58AM Thursday night – Friday morning. Our reader writes:

The MTA is working on the subway tracks in Prospect Lefferts Gardens between the Prospect Park and Parkside Avenue subway stations. In case you’ve never been over to this side of Prospect Park, the subway is not buried and runs in a long open trench. I would estimate the sound decibel rating at about 120 (see this handy chart) which as you can tell by the video is extremely loud. It is impossible to sleep with such noise. This does not seem to be emergency work. In fact, this has been going on-and-off for the last few weeks on some nights. I should note that most of the time they are not welding as seen in the video but are pounding away with what sounds like a steel mallet. Not quite as loud, but enough.

My questions are: couldn’t this work be done on the weekends instead of when people have to sleep and go to work the next day? Doesn’t this portion of tracks have three lines – that is, couldn’t this work be done during the day? If I am unaware of why this work must be done at these times, couldn’t the MTA have done a better job of informing our neighborhood?

Finally, as a longtime resident, in the past I have seen workers often doing what appeared to be similar work during the day. In fact, this may be the most repaired area of tracks in the subway system by my guess. What changed that requires this work to be done at 3:58 a.m?

Nothing like an early start to the MTA workday.