Officials with the MTA were delayed to diagnose the reason for Sunday’s massive subway power outage, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday — part of a series of transit disasters that disrupted train service for around five hours.
“Because of the survey I coordinated today, the MTA has revealed a grouping of disappointments that brought about some reinforcement systems not giving power as planned final evening, including an extra inability to rapidly diagnose the basic reason,” Hochul said Monday evening in an explanation.
The recently sworn-in governor reported she advised the agency to employ outside specialists to research the bungle.
“I have coordinated the MTA to hold two free designing firms to aid a careful profound plunge of what occurred and make proposals to guarantee this doesn’t happen once more,” she said.
Hochul — after prior in the day tearing the “unsatisfactory” service disturbance and vowing to make quick work of what caused the disaster — pledged work to build local commuters’ “confidence” in the public transit system.
“My message to the riders is this: We are attempting to discover the full degree of what turned out badly, and we will fix it,” she said. “New Yorkers merit supreme confidence in a completely working subway system, and I guarantee to give it my best shot to reestablish that confidence.”
The MTA said Monday a battery-powered reinforcement system was actuated about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, to keep the subways running. That system is intended to return to normal Con Edison power whenever the situation allows.
However, all things being equal, the emergency batteries continued to power the system for approximately 45 minutes, driving them to run out of power, and thusly stop numerous train lines, as indicated by transit officials.
In excess of 83 trains along the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 lines, just as the L train, went to an impermanent stop Sunday, the governor recently said during a press conference. The five-hour subway service disturbance included abandoned straphangers making the “perilous” decision to self-empty from ended train cars, Hochul said.
Firemen looked through subway tunnels for riders, before trains along the influenced lines continued running about 1:30 a.m. Monday, as indicated by the governor.