NEW YORK (AP) — New York Metropolis subway service was disrupted for a second day Friday as transit staff labored within the cramped confines of a tunnel beneath Manhattan to take away two trains that collided and derailed, inflicting minor accidents to about two dozen passengers.
The crash occurred at about 3 p.m. Thursday when a northbound 1 prepare carrying about 300 passengers was switching from the specific monitor to the native monitor on the 96th Avenue station, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officers stated. The 1 prepare collided with an out-of-service prepare with 4 staff on board.
“We’re grateful that this low-speed collision didn’t injure extra folks,” MTA Chair Janno Lieber stated at a briefing in entrance of the station on Friday.
Lieber stated partial service could be restored as soon as staff are in a position to rerail the derailed passenger prepare and transfer it out of the best way. 9 of the prepare’s 10 vehicles had been rerailed by Friday morning, he stated.
NYC Transit President Richard Davey stated getting the tenth automobile again on monitor was a sophisticated operation due to the subway tunnel’s low ceiling.
“The ultimate automobile of the passenger prepare that derailed, there’s no room, proper?” Davey stated. “It is a tunnel.”
Transit staff are “actually lifting it a couple of inches, shimmying it over, lifting it a couple of, shimmying it over,” Davey stated. “In order that course of takes some time.”
Davey stated the passenger prepare had the inexperienced gentle to proceed Thursday however the disabled prepare didn’t. “Because of this it ran into the prepare,” he stated. “Why we don’t know, that’s nonetheless below investigation.”
A group from the Nationwide Transportation Security Board arrived in New York on Friday to attempt to examine the reason for the collision between the passenger prepare and the opposite prepare, which was out of service attributable to vandalism.
No time has been set for an NTSB briefing on the collision, an company spokesperson stated.
Officers stated the vandalized prepare, whose wheels had been broken by the influence of the collision, might be eliminated after the passenger prepare is rerailed.
Derailments and crashes within the 119-year-old New York Metropolis subway system are uncommon. The worst crash in metropolis subway historical past occurred on Nov. 1, 1918, when a dashing prepare derailed in a sharply curved tunnel in Brooklyn, killing not less than 93 folks.
Extra not too long ago, 5 folks died on Aug. 28, 1991, when a 4 prepare derailed at Manhattan ‘s 14th Avenue Union Sq. Station. That prepare’s motorman was discovered at fault for alcohol intoxication and served 10 years in jail for manslaughter.
