NYC Subway Delays: Service Almost Back To Normal For Evening Commute

NEW YORK, NY — NYC commuters should have a much easier go of it for the evening commute than they did Friday morning, when a power outage at the Seventh Avenue-53rd Street station caused chaos at stations across the city.

"Service has resumed on every line that was affected," MTA spokeswoman Amanda Kwan told Patch. Trains are still bypassing the station, though, because "there is no power at Seventh Avenue, so there is no station lightning, and the escalators don’t work," Kwan said.

Temporary generators were being brought in to restore power to the station. The MTA faulted Con Edison for the outage, while the power company said it was investigating the cause.

In the morning, commuters on the A/C/E and B/D/F/M lines dealt with trains running on different lines, cars sitting at stations for more than 15 minutes, conductors unsure of where exactly their train was headed and two lines that are currently in a total suspension.

A Q train conductor summed up the situation nicely: "There are extensive delays across the system. Take any train that's moving."

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Service is mostly restored. Here's the latest word on train service from the MTA, as of 3:45 p.m.

• Due to a Con Ed loss of power at Seventh Avenue, B, D and E trains are bypassing the station in both directions.
• For service to and from Seventh Avenue, use the nearby 50th Street E station or the nearby 47-50 Streets-Rockefeller Center station for B and D train service.
• Due to signal problems at Grand Central-42nd Street, Some 34th Street-Hudson Yards-bound 7 trains terminate at Queensboro Plaza.
• Expect delays in both directions. As an alternative, for service between Queens and Manhattan consider E, F, M, N or R train service.
• Following an earlier incident at 77nd Street, 4, 5 and 6 train service has resumed with delays.

Friday's delays were so severe that Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the state's Department of Public Service as well as the MTA, which he oversees, to investigate ConEd's equipment failures.

"The loss of power due to a Con Edison equipment failure during the morning rush hour caused a cascading effect and impacted the lives of thousands of commuters. Simply put, this was completely unacceptable," Cuomo said in a statement. "The MTA will continue to deploy emergency resources to address the short-term issues, and our investigation will address all aspects of today’s events to get to the bottom of what happened."

Here's a sampling of the social media reaction to the mess from the morning.

Image via MTA