NEW YORK — New York City subway service was disrupted for a second day Friday as transit workers labored in the cramped confines of a tunnel beneath Manhattan to remove two trains that collided and derailed, causing minor injuries to about two dozen passengers.
The crash happened at about 3 p.m. Thursday when a northbound 1 train carrying about 300 passengers was switching from the express track to the local track at the 96th Street station, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said. The 1 train collided with an out-of-service train with four workers on board.
“We’re grateful that this low-speed collision did not injure more people,” MTA Chair Janno Lieber said at a briefing in front of the station on Friday.
Lieber said partial service would be restored once workers are able to rerail the derailed passenger train and move it out of the way. Nine of the train’s 10 cars had been rerailed by Friday morning, he said.
NYC Transit President Richard Davey said getting the 10th car back on track was a complicated operation because of the subway tunnel’s low ceiling.
“The final car of the passenger train that derailed, there’s no room, right?” Davey said. “This is a tunnel.”
Transit workers are “literally lifting it a few inches, shimmying it over, lifting it a few, shimmying it over,” Davey said. “So that process takes a while.”
This photo provided by NYC Emergency Management shows the derailment of a New York City subway car, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. A New York City subway train derailed Thursday after being sideswiped by another train, leaving more than 20 people with minor injuries including some who were brought to hospitals, the New York City Police Department said. Credit: AP
Davey said the passenger train had the green light to proceed Thursday but the disabled train did not. “As a result it bumped into the train,” he said. “Why we don’t know, that’s still under investigation.”
A team from the National Transportation Safety…
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