Subway service resumed on the F and G strains in downtown Brooklyn at 5:57 a.m. Thursday — with 20-minute delays on some strains within the morning rush — after an explosion within the system’s State Avenue energy substation introduced service to a daunting halt on the strains Wednesday night time.
“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 Each day Information)
But precisely what precipitated Wednesday’s explosion and subsequent energy loss remained unclear. Preliminary reviews from ConEd — the facility utility that gives tens of hundreds of volts {of electrical} energy to every of the MTA’s substations — stated there had been an issue with one of many feeder strains getting into the State Avenue facility.
Lieber stated his company’s ageing tools probably performed a component.
“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 Avenue facility are scattered all through the subway system, the place they convert the excessive voltage, alternating-current feed from ConEd’s energy vegetation 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 Each day Information)
Wednesday night time’s outage stranded some 3,500 straphangers underground in a pair of F trains for two-and-a-half hours. Three different trains had been momentarily caught in tunnels as effectively, however passengers had been in a position to exit onto station platforms. Officers stated one rider was transported for bronchial asthma remedy; no transit staff had been injured.
“Last night was a bad night for New Yorkers,” Lieber stated. “This is what you never want to happen to your riders.”
