Subway riders who want to ride the Lexington Avenue line at night between Midtown to Brooklyn this week need to make other plans, as crews began work late Monday on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's overnight Fastrack repairs program.

From Monday night through early Friday morning, the MTA is shutting down the city's busiest line overnight for safer and more efficient work.

The 4, 5 and 6 lines are closed in both directions from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. between Grand Central Station and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, affecting 15 stations.

Dozens of workers were performing overnight more than 300 maintenance tasks in stations and tunnels along the track, including track repair and signal inspections.

"This is day one for the New York City subway, but we have a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week system. We've got an awful lot of work that we have to do on it, to inspect all the exits, inspect the track, signals, communication and do maintenance and repair work on it," said MTA NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast. "And it's getting more and more difficult in order to provide a safe environment for our employees to do that and work on a very good job and do that while trains are running."

Riders in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan told NY1 they did not looking forward to the disruptions.

"I think it's messed up, because there's a lot of people who work at night like me," said one subway rider. "I work at night, I live in the Bronx."

"We got to work, and a lot of people have to get up so early in the morning and get to work so early," said another rider. "So it's going to affect the commuters, it's going to affect everyone who works in those times."

"I actually go to school in the area, and there are students like myself, we travel at night, so what would they have to do? Take a cab or perhaps the bus? What would the alternate route be?" said a third.

"It already takes me an hour to get down here. So now it's going to take me an extra half-hour to get anywhere," said a fourth.

The next Fastrack closure will come next month on the Seventh Avenue 1, 2 and 3 lines between 34th Street in Manhattan and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

For more information, visit mta.info.