Bay Ridge subway riders are finally getting some relief after Hurricane Sandy.
The R train could begin operating between Brooklyn and Manhattan for the first time since the storm hit by the end of the week, MTA officials said yesterday.
Transit workers are making repairs on the heavily-flooded Montague Street Tunnel — which the R uses to travel under the East River— around the clock, said Carmen Bianco, senior vice president of subways.
“We hope to get that [running] by Dec. 21,” Bianco said at the MTA’s monthly transit committee meeting.
Many riders who typically use the R train have switched to the 4 and 5, leading to overcrowding on those already jammed lines.
Sections of the A train that were wiped out from the storm will be opened next, said New York City Transit chief Thomas Prendergast.
Those stations — located in the Rockaways — will likely be open by spring, he said.
And the South Ferry 1 train station — which was completely destroyed in the storm — will likely be shuttered for a year, he said.
That Lower Manhattan station — which completed a $527 million renovation in 2009 — had $600 million in damages from the storm.
“There’s no cheap solution here,” he said.
Officials are now debating whether to construct it in the same way that it was prior to the storm, or to move forward with an entirely new plan.
One of the issues being contemplated is where to out key equipment — like signals — to keep them out of future flood waters.