Another Day, Another Round of Dizzying Delays on Subways, Trains, and Roadways

Subway chaos erupted for a second day on July 31 as thousands of morning commuters were left waiting, hot, sticky, and frustrated for severely delayed trains traced to balky equipment at a single station in Greenwich Village.

Then to add to commuter woes, a torrential downpour later that afternoon ended up flooding parts of the FDR Drive and sent streams of water cascading into a Metro North train at Grand Central and flooded some subway stations.

”Wow, never seen a deluge like this on a Metro North train in Grand Central,” @chantalmclaugh posted a video on X.

Portions of the FDR also flooded, although flooding appeared worse in Queens, where police had to rescue stranded passengers on the Clearview Expressway and floods stopped trains at the LIRR station in Bayside, causing service to be halted on the Port Washington line out of Penn Station.

It was only the latest in a day of commuter hell. Just before 9am on July 31, NYCT Subway announced another outage to the signal system at West 4th Street/Washington Square subway station. The same station had experienced its first outage just two days prior, which also snarled subways across the entire system.

The outage resulted in a handful of trains experiencing disruption from both directions. The F train had to be rerouted, the D and M trains were partially suspended, and both the C and B trains were fully suspended. “You may see some ‌‌C‌ trains running, but no additional trains will depart from their terminals,” NYCT Subway wrote on X. The same applied to B trains.

One frustrated commuter waiting for a delayed F train at the Lexington Av/63rd Street station griped: “If there are this many delays, why doesn’t it update on Google Maps? Now I have to wait when I would’ve taken a different train.”

The first outage on Tuesday, July 29, was caused by a tripped breaker, which is designed to interrupt electrical flow when circuit damage or potential hazards have been detected. The ensuing investigation found that the trip was likely due to extreme heat and an aging system. While lines were up and running again by the evening rush, it was just the beginning of the week’s extreme temperatures.

NYC has since experienced multiple days’ worth of heat advisories, with temperatures nearing 100 degrees and the heat-humidity index hitting triple digits. After Tuesday’s outage, the New York City Transit president, Demetrius Crichlow, told Straus News that severe weather impairs the MTA system.

“Whether it’s extreme heat or extreme cold, it causes strain on our system. That, coupled with the fact that we have an aging infrastructure,” said Crichlow.

The MTA is working to address its outdated systems, but to catch up, the agency needs a lot of money and a lot of time. More to the point, the Capital Plan outlines a whopping $68.4-billion investment to improve the subway system over four years. But the plan has already faced setbacks, ranging from unreliable funding from the Trump administration to a race against the system’s already decaying mechanics.

“Our capital program is set to invest millions of dollars into substations, which means picking up or improving upon the substations that we have out there, which will give us better, cleaner power, but also gives us better tools and management,” said Crichlow.

UPDATE: Gov. Kathy Hochul has released the following statement on July 31 in response to this week’s signal outages and massive subway delays.

“The power issues this week at West 4th St. have affected millions of subway customers on some of the hottest days of the summer. New Yorkers deserve better.” Hochul then went on to reference the funding being invested over the next four years, but how that’s too long for New Yorkers. “At the same time, New Yorkers can’t wait years for more resilient service; I’ve directed the MTA to undergo a full review of this week’s issues to prevent similar outages in the future. I will always stand with our subway riders to ensure they have safe, reliable service.”