NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Traffic came to a screeching halt on Wednesday afternoon at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel after officials said a non-MTA contractor working on an independent project drilled a hole in its structure, causing a leak.
“I do not at this time have an ETA about when we're gonna have the use of all of the lanes again, but we do have contractors in the tunnel right now and engineers who are working to fix the problem caused by this other contractor,” MTA CEO and Chair Janno Lieber told 1010 WINS anchor Suzanne Colucci just after 4 p.m.
At 5:53 p.m., NYC Emergency Management said that the tunnel reopened in both directions, but that residual delays are expected.
The leak was spotted by transit authorities at about 12:30 p.m,, and the entire tunnel was briefly closed out of what officials called an abundance of caution as water entered the roadway through ventilation ducts.
At 3 p.m., two-way traffic was restored in the north tube as necessary repairs were made to the south tube.
“We determined it was the drilling contractor who drilled about a 2.5 inch hole through the cast iron liner which is above the exhaust duct,” President of Bridges and Tunnels Kathy Sheridan said during a city press conference. “The plug is actually in place and the leak has subsided, so it will not be an extended closure.”
This contractor was a non-MTA project contractor who was working in the East River to identify locations for an expansion of the East River esplanade next to the UN, and they probed in the wrong location, Lieber said.
The immediate focus was on restoring tunnel access, but Lieber said that a later investigation will allocate “responsibility and costs.”
“We are reviewing this matter intensively. Right now our first focus is on repair and restoration,” Chief Infrastructure Officer at NYC Economic Development Corporation said. “We are investigating every aspect, every element of how we got here in this moment.”
Lieber encouraged anyone traveling to the U.S. Open, or commuting in general, to take the subway or Long Island Rail Road if possible.
“I'm not your GPS, but I think common sense would dictate if you can take mass transit do so, and if you can't, you might want to look at alternative options,” Lieber said. “The Midtown tunnel [isn't] going to be processing the level of traffic that it normally does. But again, I'm not your GPS and certainly you've got 1010 WINS to rely on.”