Rodriguez said the safest cars are the front, with the conductor, or the middle, where another MTA worker is stationed. But if you get onto a train car and something doesn’t feel right, he said, get off at the next stop — even if that means you have to wait for another train and you’re going to be late.

Brooklyn straphangers were blindsided by R train closures over the weekend — even as some were relieved to avoid the Big Apple’s violence-plagued underground. The R was suspended from Friday night to Monday morning for “structural maintenance,