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Hurricane Sandy: Before and After the Storm: Subway service

Harry

By Harry,
in New York City Subway

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MHV9218

MHV9218

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If subway service comes back Wednesday, it would probably just be El service in the Bronx.

 

On top of any potential subway flooding, the southern third of Manhattan is blacked out as well, that Con Ed transformer blew up pretty good.

 

 

Tell me about it. I watched that transformer blow, and then my own lights go afterwards. Not fun. Don't think there's gonna be full subway service for a long while, nor do I think there's gonna be power for a few days.

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Andres

Andres

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This storm has effectively crippled the subway system, it will be days probably weeks and maybe months to restore service. If service is restored it might be shuttles on the elevated sections and if not closed until the water is drained. I mean it's salt water so the damage that cause is extensive. No one could see damage on this level most of the yards are flooded and manhattan is virtually cut off from the outside via subway. It does not matter the preparation they took it was not enough. Even MTA Headquarters fell to the storm, so this could be the very end of the subway system. Succumbing to a hurricane. But at least the rails were not operating at the time so some good came out of that.

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CHItransitFan88

CHItransitFan88

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From Reuters

Statement from MTA Chairman Joseph J.Lhota on Service Recovery

 

The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region. It has brought down trees, ripped out power and inundated tunnels, rail yards and bus depots. As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line. The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens Midtown Tunnel also took on water and was closed. Six bus garages were disabled by high water. We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery. Our employees have shown remarkable dedication over the past few days, and I thank them on behalf of every New Yorker. In 108 years, our employees have never faced a challenge like the one that confronts us now. All of us at the MTA are committed to restoring the system as quickly as we can to help bring New York back to normal.

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w8Hou

w8Hou

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There is a good article from the wall st journal....

Salt Water Puts Subway 'In Jeopardy'

 

The storm that has wreaked havoc along the East Coast struck a historic blow to one of New York City's most vulnerable—and vital—points: the subway system.

 

A storm surge driven by the remains of Hurricane Sandy sent seawater pouring into at least six under-river tunnels of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's subway system Monday night, seriously threatening the goal to quickly restore vital mass-transit service in the city.

 

Before Hurricane Sandy made landfall Monday, the MTA worked to seal off openings that would allow corrosive salt water to sweep into the system and might incapacitate trains into the coming weekend.

 

After the flooding, its extent not yet fully measured, the threat of an extended shutdown loomed over a system that carries 5.2 million passengers a day and is essential to the city's economy.

 

The subway system is "in jeopardy," MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said Monday. "Our subway system and salt water do not mix."

 

Salt can eat at motors, metal fasteners and the electronic parts, some many decades old, that keep the system running. Salt water, and the deposits it leaves behind, degrades the relays that run the signal system, preventing train collisions.

 

Salt water also conducts electricity, which can exacerbate damage to signals if the system isn't powered down before a flood.

 

The MTA closed down its entire regional network of rails and buses on Sunday evening and expected it will remain dark at least until Wednesday morning.

 

Agency officials couldn't say how quickly the subway could be brought back into operation, but Mr. Lhota said in an interview that the flooding above ground appeared "serious."

 

Late Monday night, an MTA spokesman confirmed that floodwater had breached the subway system flooding all five tunnels between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well as the Steinway Tube between Midtown and Queens. Railyards also flooded, and the A train bridge in the North Channel in Jamaica Bay was underwater after the surge.

 

The speed of recovery would depend on whether floodwaters damaged any of the rest of the 14 subway tunnels under the Harlem and East Rivers, where the system is most exposed to catastrophic flooding.

 

A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed late Monday that the Hoboken, Exchange Place and Newport stations on the PATH rail system had also flooded. It was not clear if floodwaters had reached the PATH tracks.

 

Klaus Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, wrote in a report last year that it could take as long as 29 days to pump out a full inundation of the tunnels.

 

The system already copes with a tremendous amount of groundwater and runoff, especially at stations at the tip of Manhattan, where the water table has risen in recent years. Even on a dry day, the MTA's 300 pumping rooms remove an estimated 13 million gallons of water from the tunnel network, just to keep the system dry enough to run.

 

Pumping water out of flooded tunnels would take anywhere from 14 hours to four days, MTA officials said.

 

And that task would be followed by even more painstaking work—evaluating damage, then cleaning and repairing or replacing the electronic signal arrays that line every inch of the subway tracks, and which are essential to running the system's trains.

 

"You can't order a part from Westinghouse or General Electric that is 100 years old," Mr. Jacob said. MTA workers will have to clean and test flooded equipment, "then you cross your fingers and hope that it works," he said.

 

The last time tunnels flooded was Dec. 11, 1992, during a nor'easter that knocked out subway service briefly.

 

Some of those three tunnels were restored to service immediately, but the MTA's Canarsie line—which carries the L train from Manhattan to Brooklyn—was out of service for days.

 

In an interview, Mr. Lhota suggested that the subway could again reopen in phases, depending on the level of damage, with some areas outside Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn returning sooner.

 

A more worrying example from that storm was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's PATH train service. Flooding from the same storm destroyed a signal array in the tunnels beneath the Hudson, and knocked out train service between New Jersey and lower Manhattan for 10 days.

 

That prompted a hurried rebuilding of that part of the PATH signal system, a spokesman said, and an additional reform: The Port Authority now installs steel floodgates at the entrances to its cross-Hudson tunnels before major storms, including Sandy.

 

A Port Authority official said the agency, which operates the airports, was watching with greatest concern to see what a possible storm surge at LaGuardia or Kennedy airports might do to underground electrical systems for the airports' landing lights. The agency is also concerned about damage from debris being washed onto the tarmac.

 

The Port Authority closed its four city-area airports Monday night because of flooding.

 

Also overwhelmed was the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel between Brooklyn and the Battery. Late Monday, state Director of Operations Howard Glaser wrote on Twitter that seawater was "pouring into" the tunnel.

 

The potential for a once-in-a-century subway flood has been a growing cause for concern as sea levels have risen.

 

"We never had a weather condition as adverse as this, but we always knew that as the water warmed, there's a great deal more energy to these storms," said former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, who led the MTA in the 1980s.

 

The MTA took extensive measures before the storm to limit the amount of water flooding into tunnels, including by boarding up ventilation grates in low-lying stations, piling sandbags at station entrances, inflating a rubber dam in the Long Island Rail Road's West Side yards in Manhattan and hastily erecting a floodwall across the mouth of the No. 3 train tunnel near East 148th Street in Harlem.

 

But some water will enter the tunnels, MTA officials acknowledged. The authority will shut down power to its signal system if it appears that large amounts of water have entered the tunnels, to prevent the salty water from doing added damage to sensitive electronic relays. And in the event of a major flood, the MTA will deploy heavy duty pumping trains to remove water trapped in the tunnels beneath the rivers.

 

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204840504578087113950736132.html

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