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Better get home early.
Subway service between Grand Central and Atlantic Avenue will be shut down in both directions tonight and for the next three nights in an experimental program to do work after hours.
Instead of having maintenance crews perform track and tunnel work with trains rumbling by, transit officials said they are instituting shutdowns from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. to get the jobs done faster.
“All of this is work that must be done to maintain the safe, smooth and efficient operation of a subway system that runs around the clock, seven days a week,” said NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast.
“However, by suspending service along line segments, workers can work on and near the tracks without having to interrupt that work every few minutes while a train moves through the area.”
That’s hardly good news for security guard Jay Malloy, 29, who commutes from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Park Avenue and East 33rd Street.
To him, it means the city that never sleeps is taking a little nap.
“It’s going to mess up a lot of people,” Malloy said. “If I get off work at 12, it’s going to take me until like 4 a.m. to get home now.
“It’s going to mess up my whole commute, and the commute of the people coming to replace me at work. This is going to be bad for everyone.”
Jordan Wishner, 28, said he will wait and see.
“I don’t want to complain too much,” Wishner said. “But I hope they use the time to get a lot done. It’d be great if this would be the last time they do this. It’s always a mess on weekends.”
The work this week will affect 15 stations on the 4, 5 and 6 lines.
Transit officials said service will remain available along parallel subway corridors, although riders are advised to allow extra time for their trips.
The work — dubbed FastTrack — involves 20 miles of track along the 6.7-mile route.
Prendergast said a small army of workers will perform power and signal inspections, scrape dried mud from the roadbeds, repair platform edges and power-wash the stations.
He said customers can expect to add 20 minutes to their usual travel time.
By shutting down those stations, crews can complete their work in days instead of weeks.
Jess Schiff, 20, a college student from Crown Heights, said he isn’t impressed.
“It’s going to complicate things for a lot of people,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of connections or substitutes on this line either.”
Transit officials said employees would be positioned at key stations to hand out information and answer riders’ questions.
Subway honchos said they would also use social media, e-mail and text alerts to get the word out.
Even so, some commuters said they were still in the dark.
“I wasn’t even aware of it,” said Mike Vining, 25, who works near Grand Central.
“That’s a problem. That’s a little disturbing.”
The next overnight closure will be on the Seventh Avenue 1, 2 and 3 lines between 34th Street and Atlantic Avenue from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for four consecutive nights beginning Monday, Feb. 13 and ending at 5 a.m. Friday, Feb. 17.