The 96th Street station on the West Side IRT sits empty on Tuesday night. (Photo via Victoria Kabak)
As the New York City transit network attempts to recover from what MTA Chairman Joe Lhota called the “worst devastation” in its 108-year-old history, the city is still, as Wednesday dawns, without subway or rail service. Even worst it’s unclear when subway service will return. The MTA says that no official decisions have been made and that no announcement will come until at least Wednesday. It could be days, if not weeks, until the full subway system is up and running.
On Tuesday evening, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota released a brief statement with some gruesome details but no timetable. He said:
The extent of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation became clear today, and its impact on the MTA system is severe. The New York City subway’s South Ferry station was flooded up to the ceiling. The Long Island Rail Road confronted 11 electrical substations in a row with no power. Metro-North Railroad crews found a boat across their tracks in Ossining. Each tube of the [Brooklyn-Battery] Tunnel is filled with 43 million gallons of water.
These are just a few of the many unprecedented challenges the MTA is facing as it tries to restore service. Our employees have been assessing the damage all day and will continue to work through the night. In many places, they have been able to begin the process of recovery by pumping water and clearing tracks. New York City buses went back on the road for limited service, and will be almost at normal strength by morning.
Still, our dedicated employees are beginning to make progress. By midday tomorrow, we will be able to discuss a timetable for service restorations.
Despite Lhota’s statement, it’s tough to get a handle on what services are running. The MTA plans to run a full slate of (free) buses on Wednesday, but those vehicles clearly won’t be passing through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Additionally, with the MTA’s website still showing its low-bandwidth emergency version, no bus route maps are available outside of those programmed into BusTime. You may also be better off with the dollar vans, as Cap’n Transit writes tonight.
No matter what happens on Wednesday though, the news is unlikely to be good. The glimpse inside South Ferry is but a preview of the flooding that plagues the system, and if the city’s newest $500 million subway station is that inundated with water, I can only imagine how the East River tubes look. Again, we’ll know more on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, reports from Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road pain similarly grim pictures. With power outages, trees down and tunnels flooded, neither commuter railroad knows when any sort of service will be restored. Crews are working around the clock to clear the tracks and repair damges, but the destruction is widespread throughout the region. For instance, as Metro-North said in a statement, “On the New Haven Line, so many trees fell on the catenary wires that workers decided to concentrate on clearing and repairing just two of the four tracks, a process that is not yet complete.” That doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
So we wait. As life in much of the city slowly returns to normal — as restaurants open and bars serve thirsty patrons, as work beckons us all back to our desks — the great people-mover that gets us from our homes to our offices remains offline. Hopefully, we’ll know more on Wednesday, but as this sobering article from Bloomberg News warns, it could be a while.
37 comments
This would be a good time for the MTA to ask for some of that money the state stole from the MTA over the years for “emergency” general funds back. That being said, as the post-Irene repairs in NJ and post-9/11 1-line repairs showed us, work can go fast enough when needed. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is helping out, so hopefully the subways are back soon enough.
Ben: Taking you as an example, will your firm open today, and if so, how will you get there?
We’re still closed, but we have a full cloud setup with IP phones, etc. so I and my coworkers can work from home without any problems.
I’m with you Alex C. I think now would also be a good time to put in place that fare increase with little resistance. Does anybody think that their subway commute is worth only $2.25 now? $2.50 seems like a pittance of an increase especially compared to the costs of subways in other major cities.
Obviously it’s not getting any media attention, but part of this conversation should really include surface LRT now – not if, but where and how – and it should include routes over East River bridges. At least then those who had to would be able to cross.
Sure, but the discussion should also include the question of capacity versus redundancy. If you want to build for redundancy, you’ll want to connect Manhattan to Brooklyn, since the Manhattan-Brooklyn tunnels are more flood-prone. If you want to build for capacity, you’ll instead want to connect to Queens over the Queensboro, even though the 60th Street Tunnel is currently not flooded and could be restored to service earlier.
Goes without saying, but I think it’s almost entirely about building for capacity while planning for redundancy. In practice, there are four suitable bridges (the Triborough is probably not particularly useful here). Surface rail can be fed by buses when redundancy really is needed. Things like the Q60 and Q32 already go over the QB bridge, and could probably have their use multiplied by upgrading to LRT and dedicated lanes.
Still, at a relatively low cost/mile, routes like a Myrtle LRT over the Brooklyn Bridge are expensive but not outrageous propositions even for normal day-to-day use – if we accept that some car traffic will have to be diverted or abolished.
The problem with LRT is that if some type of delay were to happen and/or a problem occurred on the tracks at a certain place, the whole LRT can be severely delayed
That is, if anything, a bigger problem with buses. Delays are par for the course with the bus system.
Well the geniuses in the MTA decides to cut several necessary bus route in 2010, so now there can’t be any bus service in some areas that need it the most.
I doubt that has much of an effect. The buses are still available, and might even be in better condition than they would be otherwise. 😐
No one’s gonna build for redundancy. Ever.
What do you think the Second Avenue Subway is?
Isn’t the 2nd Av. subway for capacity, because of the overcrowded Lex Av. Line, busy buses on the east side and many parts of the east side are relatively far from a subway station?
So they say. Not sure I buy the SAS is much more than a gift to connected real estate firms and high-income Manhattanites. The places that most need new service to the east side are in Queens and The Bronx, places the SAS ain’t treading.
(SAS has merit as a project, of course, but something like the Q to The Bronx might trump the importance of the T from Hanover Square to 125th.)
What physical infrastructure is currently flooded? In past threads’ comments there’s conflicting information about 53rd Street.
If things are as commenters suggest, then it should be relatively easy to restore service to Queens, Upper Manhattan, and the Bronx, and over the Williamsburg Bridge. Something like 2/3 to Times Square, 1 to Times Square and then express to 14th, B/D from the Bronx to as far out in Brooklyn as possible, A/C to WTC, N/Q/R from Queens to as far south in Manhattan as possible (or over the bridge?), 7 from QBP east, etc.
How much is it that trains are stored in such a way that they can’t leave? Almost anything in Brooklyn probably ain’t getting to Manhattan, which precludes getting to Queens and The Bronx.
Where’d your hear about 53rd? From what I’ve read 53rd, 60th and 63rd are all not flooded.
If this http://www.nyctransitforums.co.....e__st__240 is to be trusted DeKalb Av. is also flooded, so the Manhattan Bridge might not be usable for a while either. Somewhere in the same forum someone claims the Newtown Creek tunnel is flooded as well.
I’d think if DeKalb is flooded, getting the express and bypass tracks pumped out and cleaned up would be one of the main priorities, since that’s the fastest way to at least get 3-4 lines running back to the Southern Division (even if they can’t use Sea Beach and if the open cut on the Brighton is problematic, they may still be able to at least get the West End line re-started and the Fourth Avenue local stations).
Problem right now is damage signal equipment which trains can not run at all. West End line has some damages as well. Pretty much anything from outside, it has problems. It is going to be very limited service when MTA opens the subway.
I’m betting on “not to be trusted”, there. The tunnel portal from the Manhattan Bridge is a good distance from the water, so if there’s water in that tube, it’s either rainwater or overflow from the Montague St. tunnel (scary thought).
No, the tracks led to Manhattan Bridge either side is not flooded. Its power is out due to Con Ed in Manhattan. Power is out south of 42 St…. I can not confirm if the Manhattan Bridge is able to run service if there is damage to equipment.
NYCT Forum poster states 53rd St tunnel and below are flooded: http://www.nyctransitforums.co.....ntry602975
My source says the same thing and it is a flood prone area around the Lexington Av/53 St station were maybe the substation was taken in with sea water causing to flood in.
#7 line has lots of damage to signal equipment due to the winds and debris. Its going to be Out of Service for a while.
The 3 is flooded, so is the WTC site and many stations of lower Manhattan. They are in Zone 1, so most of the subway routes will be unable to operate. The 7 runs through Zone 1 in Queens, near Flushing.
We still simply don’t have a full assessment. I haven’t heard *any* assessments of the state of the Harlem River tunnels, for example. And Manhattan-Bronx is the section of the system most likely to come up first.
My sources are saying there is no flooding on B/D; 2; 4/5; 6 train tracks tunnel. They are likely to restart the service if there is no damage to the signal or electronic equipment for the Bronx-Manhattan service. We hope.
It sure would be nice to see some bus service over the bridges now that the buses are out on the roads and the bridges are open, since there doesn’t seem to be any transit running from Brooklyn to Manhattan at this point. My fiancee actually decided to walk to work in Midtown from our apartment in Cobble Hill today (and as it turns out, she’s the only one there), but that can’t be an ongoing state of affairs.
Some genius thinks B39 (Willamsburg) and B51 (Manhattan) routes cuts are a good idea. 🙂
MTA you so smart. Even smart when they move their HQ in the flood prone area.
Moving the HQ back above the Transit Museum… would that be any better? Maybe it would.
370 Jay Street, MTA old HQ is sold to NYU.
Well they had to cut something. They didn’t do it for fun.
Looking at the traffic outside, wouldn’t it have made some sense for the city to dust off the playbook from the 2005 transit strike, only with busses?
That is, put restrictions in place to maximize mobility while the subways aren’t running. No cars can enter Manhattan south of 96th Street without 4 people in them, and a handful of major arteries closed to all but emergency traffic. The city has already done a test of this system, and it worked very well during the transit strike. Why can’t it be implemented now. Surely it would be better than the mess we’re seeing…
-JMP
Well….2005 transit strike has VERY LIMITED MTA buses running at that time; Plus it was near Christmas. Different times.
King Bloomberg is losing brain cells when he mess up every year.
Rockaways line is a disaster. It needs to be rebuild from Rockaway Blvd to the Rockaways.
Sad part, they just rebuild the stations in the Rockaways.
As terrible as this is, since the MTA will have to get federal funding for that, maybe this is now the time to get money to restore service to the abandoned portions of the Rockaway Beach LIRR to connect it to either the Main Line or the Queens Blvd.
1st is to restore service, then we worry about how to pay back the money before we think about activating abandoned LIRR Rockaway Beach branch.
Pay back the federal emergency funds? You saying Florida should get a free ride and we shouldn’t? :-O