This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation. Sign up to get the full version in your inbox every Thursday.
Last week’s subway crash on the Upper West Side gummed up commutes for thousands of New Yorkers — and prompted federal regulators to launch an aggressive safety probe that gained new urgency after an F train derailed in Coney Island on Wednesday.
Unlike many collisions and derailments in the subway’s 120-year history, last Thursday’s calamity didn’t happen in a flash. Rather, the slow-moving crash was the culmination of dozens of decisions over nearly an hour.
Internal MTA records obtained by Gothamist, accounts from the National Transportation Safety Board and interviews with transit employees offer a detailed timeline of events leading up to the Jan. 4 incident.
2:10 p.m.
A 10-car train on the 1 line comes to a screeching halt near the 79th Street station. The train operator alerts the subway’s rail control center that “unruly persons” made their way into an unused conductor cab and activated the emergency brakes.
2:15 p.m.
The train’s operator and conductor go onto the tracks and reset the brake valve on the subway car, but the train still isn’t working. They tell the control center they suspect a homeless person pulled the brake and request additional help.
2:35 p.m.
An inspector on the scene alerts dispatchers that multiple emergency brakes have been activated on the train. Transit workers attempt to reset all the tripped brake valves, which takes at least eight minutes. The brakes on the third car from the front of the train cannot be reset.
Transit managers decide to fully deactivate the first five cars on the train. That means a supervisor must drive the train blind from the sixth car. An operator in the front car serves as the supervisor’s eyes and ears, directing him over radio. The train pulls into the 79th Street station to let out the…
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