MTA Track Work Suspended After 2nd Death

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is suspending maintenance work and construction throughout the subway system indefinitely for the first time in five years, the president of New York City Transit, Howard Roberts, said yesterday.

The announcement came after a second track worker was killed Sunday in less than a week. Marvin Franklin, 55, was struck on Sunday afternoon by a northbound G train at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn and died on the tracks. Jeff Hill, 41, was sent to Bellevue Hospital Center in critical condition after the accident.

One transit source said that Mr. Hill was filling in for a worker attending a wake for Daniel Boggs, the transit employee who was killed last Tuesday working on the tracks at the Columbus Circle station in Manhattan. The MTA scrambled to fill the spaces of workers attending the wake, and Mr. Hill may have been working on unfamiliar turf, the source said.

The 6,000 transit employees will be shuffled through a crash course in safety training before track maintenance work resumes, Mr. Roberts said.