I'm sorry, but I've got to totally disagree on the 53rd Street tunnel being redundant with the 63rd. Without the 53rd Street tunnel you lose 3 major stations and one cannot restore full service to the Queens Blvd line. Without full service, one will continue to see the huge lines at stops like 74th Street saw on Friday.The 63rd St and 53rd St tunnels are practically redundant, apart from a couple of stops; even E service is redundant with a combination of other lines (F/D/A). I suspect that the MTA has simply been focusing its inspections and repairs on the tunnels which are *not* redundant. The time of the inspectors and switch maintainers and electrical maintainers is in high demand, no doubt. There may be nothing seriously wrong with the 53rd St. tunnel, and it would still make sense not to start using it until the inspectors and maintainers have repaired all the *non-redundant* tunnels.
In fact, but for the Astoria line being out, I'd consider the 59th Street tunnel to be more redundant than the 53rd Street tunnel. The 53rd Street affects many more people than losing the 59th Street tunnel would.
They are pumping there, but no word on how far they've gotten.This does indicate the value of redundancy. The situation with the R is similar; while they want to pump the water out quickly (because the longer the saltwater sits, the more damage is done), once they've pumped out the water they'll probably focus on less-redundant lines.
The G has problems at Newton Creek, the transition between Queens & Brooklyn. The G is also the least used line in the city. Ray Lhota indicated that they're not even working on that line at present and it will be the last line to return to service.There's hints that the G is being pumped out (people are hearing work trains running under the street).