Considering the snow, it's tough to say if the 14th St. station is above ground or below. (Photo by flickr user Jeffrey Keefer)
Snow stopped falling in the New York area nearly two days ago, and yet, the city’s transit network remains at less than full service. Buses are stranded; elevated subway routes are shuttered. Even as the commuter rail lines return to full service, New York City Transit is still trying to figure out what went wrong. After all, isn’t this the agency that’s supposed to be improving, non-stop?
For Wednesday, straphangers will find a system slowly returning to normal. The MTA continues to promise that crews are “continuing round-the-clock work to restore service throughout the system.” As of late Tuesday, the state of subway service was as follows:
Service has been restored with residual delays on the 5 to Dyre Avenue, the A to Far Rockaway, and the C, D, F, and G lines. Service remains suspended on the B and Q lines, the Franklin Avenue Shuttle and the Rockaway Park Shuttle. The L line is restored, operating in two sections: 8th Ave to Broadway Junction and Broadway-Junction to Rockaway Parkway. There is no N train service between the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station and the Whitehall Street Station. New York City Transit expects to restore further service segments in time for the morning rush hour.
Despite assurances of an easier Wednesday morning commute, the Outer Boroughs are rife with dissent. For now, their anger is directed at city agencies and leaders. Take, for instance, this post on Sheepshead Bites. The Brooklyn-based blog notes that Mayor Bloomberg’s Manhattan street is perfectly plowed while streets in Sheepshead Bay are awash in snow. Buses cannot pass; cars are stranded; the subways aren’t running. This is city government at a stand-still.
Meanwhile, MTA officials are promising to figure out just what went wrong. Around Brooklyn, 250 buses remained stuck in the snow, and many of those were not equipped with snow chains. “We typically have not had difficulties with stuck buses with the types of buses we have today. The hybrid buses we use are typically able to get through the snow but for whatever reason this snow they didn’t get through. I’m not a snow expert to tell you why,” Jay Walder said. “We do need to look back. I’m not minimizing the fact that we have had a large number of stuck buses and we do need to look back.”
Based upon my conversations with those who have knowledge of the situation, it appears as though the MTA severely underestimated the extent of the snow. While Boston’s MBTA ran ghost trains to keep tracks warm and free from the snow, the MTA had to contend with stronger-than-expected winds and deep snow drifts. The authority did not call in snow emergency squads until roads in the city were nearly impassable, and the authority was simply not ready to respond to a blizzard of this magnitude. Forty-eight hours later, we’re still paying the price.
Soon — probably today — subway schedules will return to something approximating normal and buses will begin to run. The authority will look to improve its emergency response protocols, and we’ll remember the Blizzard of 2010 as we do the rainstorm of August 2007. The authority must seek to improve out of the aftermath of the last two days. It cannot do much worse.
13 comments
I think overtime, holiday and weekend time had something to with MTA and City agencies dawdling until the last minute to call the manpower out.
Another was the weather forecasts. On Saturday afternoon Dec 25th, the forecasts said 6-9 inches in the city with up to 9-12 northeast in the suburbs of Connecticut. Snowstorm, Yes, Blizzard No. By Sunday Morning Dec 26th the forecasts were upped to 12 inches in city and more possible north and east. Then in the afternoon, the forecasts were upped again to 12+ in the city and more possible north and east. By this point (3PM Sun afternoon), government agency management and executives should have called in all the manpower available to get them in and blizzard plans up and running. By 3pm it was already snowing in NYC. We eventually got 20 inches in Central Park and some places got more. That is alot more than 12+. Dozens city snow plows got stuck and were basically useless. Add a thousand city buses and thousands of cars and trucks stuck on the road.
The amount of snow that fell had little to do with the difficult response. First, the ‘blizzard’ you speak of is defined by velocity and duration of wind, not the amount of snow that falls. Semantics aside, the poor prediction at snowfall really isn’t to blame for our current situation. Sure, 9 in turned into 12 and then into 20 before we knew it, however without any wind this would have been relatively easy to handle. Why? Two reasons…
First, the wind effectively blows snow back onto roads and rails that have already been cleared, necessitating repeated plowing. This delays the availability of machinery to clear other roads and tracks. Second, blowing snow means that drifts form. These drifts can be several feet deep. 20 inches is not difficult for many trains, or even some buses. However, a drift that is 3-4 feet high renders a route impassable. The wind is to blame (speaking only about the weather factor here), not really the snowfall total and poor prediction leading up to it.
Yes, that drifting snow was killer on embankment, grade and open cut sections. Once the snow covers the tracks above the 3rd rail cover guard, its time for a snow blower. Elevated sections (Rockaway, the Jamaica El concrete guideway) with no voids to let snow fall to the street below were in a similar bind.
Then again, we had thundersnow late Sunday, early Monday, with accumulations of 3 inches an hr for stretches.
I wonder if it is possible to outfit the trains with electric powered snow blowers for situations like this.
The other option is to run trains very frequently over the sections that are prone to accumulate snow.
Interesting point. I wonder if increased frequency could have been carried out and if it would have been sufficient to keep the third rail clear. It seems like it would. Hm..
With ten car trains that’s 20 shoes scraping the 3rd rail clear. Most of the track in flat, and even the steepest grade is not very steep, so it _should_ be pretty hard to get a train stuck. And if it does, just set the couplers so the next 600 foot long train in back of it can connect and push the stalled train clear. Now you have a quarter mile long ice scraping, snow busting, heat shedding caterpillar.
But someone has to have the common sense to use it, and write in the purchase specs that it can’t be disabled by a little snow or water. Old trains had no such issues, don’t know about the new, “improved” versions.
A line that’s running every 18 minutes during rush hour in New York City has not been restored in any meaningful sense. Right now mta.info isn’t telling me whether the parts that are running are REALLY running or running like it’s 3 AM on a summer weekend.
Yeah, that would be a nice enhancement. Instead of just saying “delayed” it would be nice if they could give some kind of estimate of how much they’re delayed by. It wouldn’t be perfect, but something based on frequency in the last two hours or something wouldn’t be bad.
Also, how are the countdown clocks doing in the storm??
This was Walder not wanting to pay the MASSIVE amount of over-time that it takes to handle weather emergencies like this one. The fact that it hit on a holiday weekend made it worse because there are ALOT less employees scheduled to work so much more OT had to be paid out. I know guys who have worked the maximum 16 hours allowed on there day off this storm meaning 24 hours of pay!
And presumably the NYC mayor’s decision not to declare a “snow emergency” like in Philadelphia, where people were ordered not to drive, was influenced by the storm’s coming at the end of a holiday weekend, on a busy travel day. There would have been people stacked up at the airports and train stations like cordwood, waiting for unavailable rides.
As opposed to tons of people stuck in trains coming back from the airport, or thousands of cars and buses stuck in the snow?
You are correct. I think it’s easier to blame the authorities for keeping you off the streets, making you pay for an extra night’s lodging, than to blame the authorities for the consequences of your positive decision to drive.
So one could make the decision to drive, wait for a bus that’s not running or be stuck on a stalled train for 9 hours.
Great choices, those!
If I may suggest two options:
A. Walk.
B. Throw on the snow chains you kept oiled and stashed away for use once every few years. What, his/her precious fingers can’t be lifted to put the oily chains on icky dirty tires? Then keep dialing 311 until, eh, until the snow melts.
The countdown clocks on the L seemed fine to me. They were showing some seriously bad news, but accurately.