Subway service resumed on the F and G traces in downtown Brooklyn at 5:57 a.m. Thursday — with 20-minute delays on some traces within the morning rush — after an explosion within the system’s State Road energy substation introduced service to a daunting halt on the traces Wednesday evening.
“A 90-year-old electrical substation had a fire — an explosion of some kind, because the door was off the hinges,” MTA chairman Janno Lieber bluntly informed reporters Thursday morning.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber is pictured on the Workplace of Emergency Administration in Brooklyn on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Every day Information)
But precisely what brought on Wednesday’s explosion and subsequent energy loss remained unclear. Preliminary reviews from ConEd — the facility utility that gives tens of 1000’s of volts {of electrical} energy to every of the MTA’s substations — stated there had been an issue with one of many feeder traces getting into the State Road facility.
Lieber stated his company’s getting older tools possible performed an element.
“We are investigating, with ConEd, the exact cause,” Lieber stated. “But I don’t want to put it on ConEd, I want to acknowledge that at least a piece of the causation seems to be an electrical substation in the MTA system that should have been repaired and replaced decades ago.”
“This is a 90-year-old electrical facility,” he added, “exactly what we have identified as in urgent need of repair and investment.”
Substations just like the State Road facility are scattered all through the subway system, the place they convert the excessive voltage, alternating-current feed from ConEd’s energy crops into the 600 volt, direct-current energy wanted to run the subway trains.
The Jay St-MetroTech subway station in Brooklyn, New York, is pictured on Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018. (Go Nakamura for New York Every day Information)
Wednesday evening’s outage stranded some 3,500 straphangers underground in a pair of F trains for two-and-a-half hours. Three different trains have been momentarily caught in tunnels as effectively, however passengers have been capable of exit onto station platforms. Officers stated one rider was transported for bronchial asthma remedy; no transit staff have been injured.
“Last night was a bad night for New Yorkers,” Lieber stated. “This is what you never want to happen to your riders.”
