Gov. Kathy Hochul Vows to Fix ‘Unacceptable’ MTA Service Failure

By: Hellen Zaboulani

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul vowed to assess and fix the system failure which led to a five-hour MTA service disruption on Sunday.  “Last night, one-half of the New York City subway system experienced an unprecedented system breakdown,” said Hochul. “This is a scary situation — something we don’t want New Yorkers to have to experience again.”  At a press conference on Monday, the governor explained that the “unacceptable” situation was caused by a short-lived Con Edison power failure, which led to a power surge.  She said the power loss at approximately 8:25 P.M. led to a “voltage dip” in the five boroughs, with two power plants going offline.  “It was a momentary outage that did go to the backup system. But when it tried to go back to normal, there was a surge — an unprecedented surge — that resulted in the subway losing signalization and communication ability,” Hochul said.

As reported by the NY Post, Gov. Hochul said the “unprecedented system breakdown” caused 83 trains from lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, as well as the L train to come to a temporary halt.   “Most concerning” among them were the five trains that came to a standstill in the tunnels between stops, leading to evacuations of hundreds of riders, she added.  Regular service was restored across the board by about 1:30 a.m. Monday, Hochul said.  She explained that regular schedules were further delayed past midnight in “a very dangerous situation” because train riders self-evacuated, and so firefighters had to search the tunnels for riders.  “We never, ever want riders to do that. It is dangerous and it caused a delay in restoration of power,” Hochul added.

The governor ruled out any foul play.  Hochul said she is “immediately directing a review” to find the “root cause” of the system failure. “We need to know why the system broke down,” she said. “We will learn lessons from this, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

”If you’re one of those riders, people relying on safe transport, the system failed you,” she said. “The MTA is the lifeblood of this city, and a disruption of this magnitude can be catastrophic.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio also spoke about the system failure in his daily briefing, saying he demanded answers  from the MTA and Con Ed.  “A lot of subway riders were really inconvenienced, and put into a really tough situation,” the mayor said. “We’ve got to figure out why this happened, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”