Subway rider who got stuck on sweltering F train puts heat on MTA for answers

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Subway rider who got stuck on sweltering F train puts heat on MTA for answers

Michael Sciaraffo, 36, was one of hundreds of riders stuck on the train that lost power for nearly an hour on June 5.  (SAM COSTANZA/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

BY DAN RIVOLI

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, June 26, 2017, 5:00 AM

 

Michael Sciaraffo squeezed onto the F train just in time for the doors to close behind him. Ten minutes later, the train was en route to the Broadway-Lafayette St. station when it came to a sudden halt in a tunnel.

 

Sciaraffo heard a familiar announcement — one that straphangers recognize as the MTA’s biggest lie: There was train traffic ahead.

 

“I’ve never been in a tunnel where it was so eerily silent, when the engine went off,” he recalled of his ride on the evening of June 5. “Everybody sort of had an audible sigh or rolling of the eyes type response.”

 

Sciaraffo, 36, was one of hundreds of riders stuck on the train that lost power for nearly an hour. The train got so hot, frustrated passengers desperately tried to pry open train car doors just to get some air, he told the Daily News.

 

About 30 minutes into the ride, passengers learned the truth: A piece of power equipment failed.

 

The F train got so hot, frustrated passengers desperately tried to pry open train car doors just to get some air. (MICHAEL SANDY CLAUS SCIARAFFO)

Now, after Sciaraffo’s Facebook post about the ordeal went viral, he’s calling for changes at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to make sure no other rider has to endure a similarly harrowing ride.

 

“There needs to be an overhaul, a review of what the MTA’s emergency and evacuation protocols actually are,” he told The News. “This should be the clarion call.”

 

Sciaraffo, who commutes between his home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and his job as a Parks Department analyst near Columbus Circle, is going on a letter-writing campaign to get transit officials and politicians from City Council to U.S. senators to investigate the MTA’s safety rules and emergency procedures.

 

“No rider should ever feel they need to take safety into their own hands,” he posted on Facebook.

 

But that’s exactly what’s going on underground.

 

Delays have become so debilitating and last so long, passengers are ditching train cars for subway tunnels — risking injury or even death from oncoming trains or electrified third rails.

 

Two riders on an F train stuck at W. 34th St.-Herald Square hoofed it down a tunnel on Tuesday around 6:30 a.m. The next day, about two dozen people climbed out of a No. 3 train near the Franklin Ave. stop in Brooklyn after it was stuck for just nine minutes.

 

Sciaraffo has become something of a social media transit advocate, keeping tabs on the daily subway grind on his Facebook page.

 

Michael Sciaraffo is going on a letter-writing campaign to get transit officials and politicians from City Council to U.S. senators to investigate the MTA’s safety rules and emergency procedures.  (SAM COSTANZA/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

“Up until that day, I viewed these train delays as something we have to put our head down and accept,” he told The News. “This is not something I will accept.”

 

MTA officials to date have offered only scant details about what happened during Sciaraffo’s ride from hell.

 

MTA spokeswoman Beth DeFalco declined to comment, referring to comments agency brass made at last week’s monthly board meeting.

 

At that meeting, Department of Subways chief Wynton Habersham explained the “root cause” of how power equipment and its back up systems failed is still under investigation.

 

The agency is looking at all cars in that fleet — built in 1975 — to see if the power problem is widespread.

 

“That event is not at all reflective of the kind of service the subways team works to provide,” Habersham said.

 

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/man-trial-butchering-friend-brooklyn-bar-dispute-article-1.3242982