Transit officials in New York are preparing for a total shutdown of subway, bus and train service as Hurricane Sandy continues to bear down on the metropolitan region.


    • All service will be suspended at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to start planning for an orderly suspension of service.

    New York City subways and buses will start phasing out service at 7 p.m. Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road will suspend service at 7 p.m. Sunday.

    The city's mass transit system is the nation's largest. The subway alone has a daily ridership of more than 5 million.

    Rainfall is expected to start late Sunday or early Monday in New York. Hurricane Sandy is headed north from the Caribbean to meet a winter storm and a cold front. Experts say the rare hybrid storm that results will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

    Bridges and tunnels will be closed on a case-by-case basis. The city also ordered an evacuation of Zone A areas that are prone to flooding and closed public schools on Monday.

    On Saturday, the MTA had workers nailing plywood covers to subway ventilation grates at South Ferry to help prevent flooding.

    The agency began to secure subway covers after flooding by a severe rainstorm on August 8, 2007. After that storm the MTA started a program to raise the grates in sidewalks that ventilate the subway at flood-prone locations.

    The raised ventilation grates are located in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, and help reduce the amount of water that enters the subway system from street level. All are designed to be attention-getting so that pedestrians don't stumble into them, and in some cases they double as bicycle racks, benches, and artistic stainless steel sculptural forms.