Latest Subway Soaking Raises More Questions Over System's Vulnerability

By Jose Martinez, The City

July 15, 2025, 2:24 p.m.

After torrential rains on Monday that turned several station entrances into waterfalls, experts warned that the subway system will remain exposed to recurring flash flooding — unless the city and the MTA better collaborate on multi-billion dollar storm-proofing projects.

Described by MTA officials as the second-biggest one-hour downpour in city history, the storm overwhelmed the subway, with more than 2 inches of rain crippling service on several lines and producing the latest striking images of water pouring down station entrances and onto platforms and trains.

Janno Lieber, the chairperson and chief executive of the MTA, said the city’s stormwater management system was not up to the task of processing more than an inch and a half in an hour.

“That’s when you get the backup into the stations, into the tunnels and you see that kind of geyser-like condition where a manhole gets popped because there is so much water backed up,” Lieber said on the PIX11 Morning News. “We are urging the city government to please take steps to expand the capacity of the stormwater management [system].”

While the MTA was able to fully restore subway service in time for the Tuesday morning commute, experts warned that the system remains vulnerable to flash flooding because of climate change and slow-moving fixes to drainage and stormproofing systems.

“The atmosphere is warm and warmer air can take more moisture and then that extra moisture hits a cold front and it’s havoc,” Klaus Jacob, a geophysicist and professor emeritus at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told THE CITY. “Then it pours cats and dogs, and it shows up as street flooding.

“And given the lack of interaction between the city and the MTA, then you get subway flooding.”

Monday’s single-hour downpour of two-plus inches was second only to a September 2021 storm from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which dumped more than three inches of rain on the city inside of 60 minutes and turned some stations into what Jacob has previously called a “default sewer system.”

“It is now the case that five of the most intense rain storms to New York City’s history have taken place in the last four years,” City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said during a Tuesday briefing.

That frequency of extreme weather puts more pressure on fixes to floodproofing the subway.

“The big picture is we need the stormwater-management system to be expanded so we don’t have those geyser-like conditions,” said Lieber, noting that the MTA plans to spend $700 million to defend the subway from stormwater flooding in its 2025-2029 capital plan.

The transit agency’s planned improvements include elevating street-level stairs and vents to help keep water out, adding capacity to more than a MTA dozen pump rooms that remove excess water and replacing old or undersized drainage infrastructure.

Lieber said that work is a “particular priority” at stations along Manhattan’s West Side, where riders posted social media images of water pouring down station staircases, out of platform manholes and even into trains.

“That is where you saw the No. 1 train knocked out, the 2 and 3 trains were impacted for a while,” he said. “That’s where you saw a couple of those geyser-like conditions where the city-owned stormwater management system backs up.

“So we need those investments.”

A DEP report last year estimated that repairs would take up to 20 years of work and cost roughly $30 billion.

‘It’s Here and It’s Urgent’

The head of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA said the city bears “primary responsibility” to keep the subway from being overwhelmed during storms.

“It’s a team effort, for sure,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the advisory group. “But the city is the captain in this case.”

But the MTA’s extreme-weather preparedness has also come under criticism.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the MTA made significant efforts to protect vulnerable parts of the system from storm surge, including erecting storm walls along the Rockaway Line in Queens, elevating critical equipment in stations and tunnels and installing barriers at some station entrances.

A 2023 report from the State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli — which was released on the same day that a raging rainstorm affected service on more than half the lines in the system — flagged the MTA’s readiness for future storms.

Lieber said no trains were stranded and that the MTA has protocols in place to protect riders, with train operators not going into areas where water rises above the third rail and could threaten power.

An MTA spokesperson declined to address questions about what riders should do when water invades stations or trains.

“We’re going to emphasize safety for riders above all,” Lieber told PIX11.

Jacob, the Columbia professor who warned prior to Hurricane Sandy in 2012 of the subway system’s vulnerability to major weather damage, said storm-proofing the subway could be a heavy lift.

“It would, believe it or not, need the governor and the mayor sticking their heads together,” he said. “Good luck.”

City officials pushed back strongly against the characterization that the two sides don’t already work very closely together.

Aggarwala, the DEP commissioner, said his agency and the MTA hold monthly coordinating meetings on resilience planning, adding that the city has cleaned 2.5 miles of sewers near 45 subway stations that have previously flooded.

“We put new infrastructure to protect the Dyckman Street station on the 1 train… and the 103rd Street station on the 6 train and we’ve had a two-year joint project to clear out a lot of construction debris from East Side Access on the site that actually protects Sunnyside Yard from flooding,” he said. “So we work very closely with the MTA.”

MTA officials countered that their planned $700 million in resiliency work from its new plan won’t be enough to stop excess storm runoff from cascading into stations if the city doesn’t improve its sewer system.

A spokesperson for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group, said the latest subway flooding is indicative of the urgent threat of climate change.

“It’s here and it’s urgent,” said Danny Pearlstein, the organization’s policy director. “Millions of commutes hinge on bold action to prevent things from getting worse and to protect New Yorkers from extreme rain, dangerous heat and rising tides.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.