And It Wasn't Even A Hurricane

Less than a month after telling its passengers what to do in case of a hurricane, Metro North failed the weather test. This morning in the space of an hour the New York City Metropolitan Area (or the Tri-State Area, as it is also known around here) received over two inches of rain. When I left the house at 7:00 a.m., it was pouring. By 7:15 it had tapered off to a more moderate rainfall--many of us stood on the platform of the South Norwalk Railroad Station without getting soaked to the skin. We boarded the 7:23 semi-express to Grand Central Terminal little knowing that the usual hour and 10 minute ride would turn out to be almost two-and-one-half hours.

According to the notice that Metro North employees scattered on the seats of the trains during the evening rush hour, this is what happened:

The service disruptions and delays you experienced this morning resulted from the intense storms that passed through our area, causing flooding in the Bronx that affected all three lines.

The high waters inundated our third rail, switches and signals. These conditions were especially severe between Mott Haven and Melrose, forcing us to temporarily suspend service in both directions on the Hudson, Harlem and New Haven lines shortly after 7 AM.

We were able to restore southbound Hudson Line train service about 30 minutes later. At approximately 8:25 AM, southbound train service was also restored on the Harlem and New Haven lines.

While system-wide service was restored, all lines were operating with significant delays as trains had to operate through the Mott Haven area at restricted speeds.

Full northbound service was finally restored at around 8:50 AM, although trains continued to pass through the Mott Haven area at reduced speeds.

We regret any inconvenience you may have experienced as a result of these weather-related service disruptions and thank you for your patience and cooperation.

The train I was on was held at the Stamford station for nearly half an hour. At one point they unloaded the train across the platform, and those passengers crowded onto our train. Then they announced that we would shortly be leaving Stamford, but only going as far as Woodlawn in the Bronx, where we could take the subway into Manhattan. However, immediately after that they told us the subways were not running. There was a stampede of passengers getting off the train. I decided to stick with the train and figure out my options when we got to Woodlawn.

The by now half-full train did not stop at Woodlawn. As we passed through the station, most of us muttered to each other something along the lines of, "well, this can either be good, or very bad..." Immediately after passing through Woodlawn they announced that one track into Grand Central was open and that we were heading in. Shortly after that we stopped and sat somewhere in the Bronx for the next half hour.

I arrived at work an hour late, which was not bad considering some of the other horror stories I heard from coworkers.

Many folks did not make it in to work at all, including many Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA, of which Metro North is a part) employees. Full subway service had still not been restored by the time we left at 5:00 p.m., although Metro North seemed to be running on time--at least according to the radio stations and online news services we checked.

And what of the web site (http://www.mta.info/) we were supposed to check for updates? Basically, it could not handle the traffic and crashed and burned for most of the morning. By lunchtime it was accessible, but no one could find any updated information about service. Only when someone in the building emailed us a direct link to a page of updates were we able to find the information on the MTA site. It was exactly the same information the New York Times and CBS Radio 880 had been posting on their sites throughout the day.

Weather happens, and when it does, the MTA doesn't.

Peace,
Jeffri