NEW YORK (AP) – Engineers, working around the clock since two busy subway lines were knocked out by a fire more than a week ago, are ready to implement a plan restoring the lines almost to full service, transit officials announced Tuesday.

Full non-peak service on the A and C lines was to be restored by Wednesday morning, and service was to be at 70 percent on the lines during the rush hours, New York City Transit president Lawrence Reuter said.

“There’s still going to be some delays, and there will still be crowding,” Reuter said. “The engineers in the field figured out how to get the system to this level of service.”

Reuter said that there had been extreme damage to the system when the fire destroyed a control room at Chambers Street in Manhattan on Jan. 23 but that engineers had been able to bring in equipment from other parts of the network.

He said it would be another three to six months before further improvements could be implemented and years before the system is fully repaired.

The C line, which carries some 110,000 weekday riders through Manhattan and Brooklyn, ending two stops before the Queens border, was knocked out of service completely by the fire.

The A line, which carries some 470,000 daily riders and runs a similar but longer route, was severely limited.

After the fire, Reuter initially estimated that repairs would take up to five years and cost millions of dollars. But NYC Transit’s parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, later revised the estimate to several months. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

At the Jay Street station in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening, the MTA handed out service update sheets. Many commuters expressed relief, but at least one was skeptical.

“This is only good news now that we have lowered our expectations,” griped Howard Jimesson, who said the disturbances have added a half-hour of commuting from Westchester County to Brooklyn by train and subway. “I am still considering driving instead.”

Reuter, at his press conference, praised the engineers who worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts to help restore service.

“These are temporary repairs, but the system is safe,” he said. “We still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Earlier in the day, Brooklyn straphangers already feeling the effects of the fire on A and C service suffered further woes when a smoke condition in a subway station caused lunchtime problems on the D train.

The problem at the Ninth Avenue stop in Sunset Park was reported at 11:19 a.m., forcing a one-hour suspension of service on the line in both directions between 36th Street and Stillwell Avenue.

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