An MTA worker who accidentally pressed a button “most likely” caused the massive disruption of subway service for hours on several lines last month, according to an external investigation ordered by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Reports, conducted by a couple of engineering firms, revealed that the loss of power at the New York City railroad traffic control center was caused by a manual stop switch on one of the units. energy distribution of the building, according to a press release from the governor. .
The findings suggest that the emergency button may have been pressed incorrectly, as a plastic protector designed to prevent accidental activation of it was missing, according to the research summary.
“Two external engineering companies, HDR and WSP, were commissioned to investigate and determine a root cause and found that the disruption was caused by human error,” the governor’s office said.
The error at the end of last month caused a prolonged shutdown and interruption of service on lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and L.
The governor on Friday pledged to defend the liabilities with the aim of preventing similar service outages.
“New Yorkers deserve absolute trust in a fully functioning subway system, and our job is to restore that trust,” Hochul said in a prepared statement. “I also direct the MTA to review all operations control centers throughout the system to identify potential potential weaknesses and provide security to prevent a situation like this from happening again.
“We will offer the modernization, improvements and reliability that pilots deserve.”
Acting MTA President Janno Lieber said the MTA’s initial findings immediately after the outage (that the electrical safety system had failed) proved incorrect.
In fact, the backup systems worked, but the “construction systems” at the MTA dispatch center known as the Rail Control Center darkened, according to Lieber. Someone pressed the wrong button in an attempt to reactivate these systems and the CCR lost its ability to communicate with trains in service.
“It looks like a button that shouldn’t be pressed was accidentally pressed,” Lieber said during a news conference Friday. “I have to say that I am deeply disappointed and I say to our customers: This cannot happen. The Railway Control Center is the Blessed Sacrament of the metro system “.
According to the HDR report, the 84-minute power loss was caused by “an inadequate maintenance organizational structure in the CCR,” as well as by the “lack of an adequate power distribution control system.”
The WSP probe found the shutdown was “very likely” due to the “manually activated emergency power button.” The company could not conclude whether the button was pressed on purpose or by mistake because there is no video surveillance system.
Reports come after two subway trains were trapped in the Harlem River tunnel on Aug. 29 when a power outage caused the service to be disrupted along several lines and left hundreds of passengers evacuated. A train 2 with a connection to Brooklyn and a train 3 heading north were traveling through the tunnel around 10:40 p.m.
A total of 150 people were evacuated from train 2 heading south and 250 were evacuated from train 3 heading north, according to sources.
The next day, Hochul promised to reach the end of an “unprecedented system breakdown” that caused a five-hour delay in subway service and an hour of complete shutdown of several lines.
State Senator Leroy Comrie (D-Brooklyn) said Hochul’s rapid modification of the investigation was a breath of fresh air, given the disgraced former governor. Frequent change of guilt and evasiveness of the Andrew Cuomo administration.
“The fact that she turned the report around quickly shows that she wants to look at it in a holistic way and I congratulate her on that,” she told The Post. “It shows that there was a higher level of cooperation on the part of the MTA with the governor’s office, which is a big maritime change from the previous administration, where they tried to double the way out of everything.”
Lisa Daglian, of the MTA’s Citizens Advisory Committee, congratulated Hochul’s team for quickly posting the findings of the investigations, saying outsiders should be comforted by the governor’s “quick and strong” response.
“To their credit, they didn’t put this out at 5 o’clock on a Friday. They published it once the results were obtained and the review was done quickly, ”said Daglian.
“Pilots need to be assured that quick review and a strong response are a sign of stable hands that are ready to get where they want to go and find out the root causes of delays when they don’t.”