NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880/AP) — A team from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived in New York City on Friday to begin an investigation into the cause of Thursday's subway derailment on the Upper West Side that injured more than two dozen people, as the MTA works to restore full service to 1, 2 and 3 trains in Manhattan.
The derailment around 3 p.m. Thursday knocked out normal 1, 2 and 3 service on the Broadway corridor between Midtown and Harlem. Crews worked Thursday night to clear the tracks, but service remained severely impacted Friday.
Gov. Kath Hochul announced that the MTA resumed limited service on the 1 and 3 lines to and from the reopened 96th Street station at 5 p.m. on Friday, while the 2 train will continue to run on the 5 line.
"Limited service" means that the 1 line will run in both directions from its northern terminus at Van Cortlandt Park-242 Street to 96th Street, and from Times Square-42nd Street to South Ferry, officials said.
The 3 line will run in both directions from its northern terminus at Harlem-148th Street to 96th Street, and from Times Square-42nd Street to New Lots.
The MTA said that shuttle buses will provide service to riders between 96th Street and Times Square-42nd Street, and these changes will be in place until additional tracks are cleared and any necessary repairs are completed.
“New York’s subway system is incredibly resilient and over and over has shown an ability to quickly bounce back. In this case, MTA teams have worked 24 hours straight to reestablish service, and we’ll keep at it until full service is restored," MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said.
Previously, service for 1 and 3 lines was partially suspended between Times Square and 135th Street, and the MTA said that it was operating in a limited capacity in two sections north and south of the suspended stretch. Meanwhile, 2 trains were delayed as they were being rerouted to the 5 line. See the latest service changes here.
The NTSB said Thursday night that it was launching a team to investigate the collision between a 1 train carrying about 300 passengers and an out-of-service MTA train with four workers just north of the 96th Street station.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy was among the investigators that travelled to the city Friday morning. At a news conference Friday morning, MTA Chair Janno Lieber said the MTA and NTSB would have a meeting on the investigation later in the day.
The public got an update from Homendy on Friday afternoon when she explained what the NTSB has learned thus far about the derailment in a preliminary and ongoing investigation.
According to Homenday, a passenger activating the emergency brakes on a train caused it to be out of order, and it needed to be moved to a railyard. At this point, she said, the control center instructed the crew to cut out the brakes on the first five cars and cut out the power before discharging the passengers.
Crew members pushed the whole train, and “They passed through some signals, approach signals and a home signal, and in that configuration, in that push mode, that train struck a northbound train at a crossover," Homendy said.
“The non-revenue train then was pushed to the right, hit a wall, and the first car is pushed upwards. The train that was struck, with the passengers, was pushed to the left, and then both cars derailed," Homendy continued.
Homendy confirmed that there was a lot of damage along the track, and that the NTSB would be documenting the scene and preserving perishable evidence over the next few days.
The slow speed collision that caused the passenger train to partially derail injured at least 25 people, according to the MTA. All of them suffered minor injuries, thought seven passengers and one crew member were taken to hospitals, the NYPD said.
The in-service train with passengers had the "green light to proceed" and was going from the express to the local tracks when the out-of-service train, which didn't have the signal, struck it at a slow speed, according to Lieber.
The out-of-service train had been stuck because someone erroneously pulled a number of emergency stop cords in an act of "vandalism," MTA officials said. The workers were on board to reset the brake cords.
Photos posted on social media showed the passenger train partially off the tracks in an area that had a track-switching mechanism. Officials said there were no immediate signs of equipment failure and investigators were seeing if human error was involved.
Riders described a "really scary" situation in which personal belongings "flew across the train" and people fell into each other or hit their heads on poles or other objects.
Firefighters helped remove passengers from the in-service train as well as a few hundred more people from another train that was not involved but had to stop in the tunnel because of the collision.
“Thankfully there were no serious injuries,” said Richard Davey, president of NYC Transit. “Obviously two trains should not be bumping into one another. We are going to get to the bottom of that.”
The city's aging subway system has struggled with power outages, signal problems and other breakdowns. The MTA has been facing a fiscal crisis in recent years, driven in part by lower ridership and revenues since the pandemic, though the state's most recent budget has helped the agency balance its books.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
