Subway Riders Stuck On Stranded Trains As Signal Issues Plague 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, And S Lines

July 19, 2019, 7:22 p.m.

Commuters across seven subway lines—the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 42nd Street S shuttle—have been waiting for over an hour as the MTA is experiencing delays caused by "network communications issues" plaguing the system.

A subway car on the track

A subway car on the track

Commuters across seven subway lines—the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 42nd Street S shuttle—have been waiting for over an hour as the MTA is experiencing delays caused by "network communications issues" plaguing the system. [Update: Service is being slowly restored, and the MTA says they do not believe the issue was power or heat related; more details below.]

The city is in the middle of a heat wave:

Service is suspended on all seven lines; here's what the MTA says:

MTA workers are now manually signaling trains to get them moving, but it's a slow process:

Mayor Bill de Blasio blasted the MTA:

Update: Service is coming back... but the MTA says to avoid those lines :

One man on a 6 train said it took about 90 minutes to go from 33rd Street to 77th Street. Another woman who got off a 6 train at 86th Street and Lexington said it took about an hour to get from Grand Central to 86th, with the train stalling between 59th and 86th. "It wasn’t that bad, they kept saying the system was down," the woman said, but she mentioned how there was no air-conditioning on the train.

Anderson Hilario, 24, of the Bronx, said his 6 train was stalled an hour and a half between 77 and 86. One guy was freaking out, trying to smoke a cigarette, he recalled. He said he had to stand throughout the delay since all the seats were filled. “I’m pissed,” he said. “MTA owes me an Uber.”

However, some lettered lines were not immune to issues. Blair Campion got on a 7th Avenue B at 53rd Street and Lexington (she had transferred from an E). "The D came first but no one that I saw from the platform was able to get on it," she said. "I didn't think I could make the B train that came but a woman behind me decided for me and shoved a bunch of us. I had one arm over my head trying to hold the ceiling and everyone was literally dripping in sweat. People on the platform were yelling when the second train came and was packed."

Campion lives in Harlem. "Then the B train ran express from 59th (which was good for me)," she described, "but people were furious and shoving to get off. Never been so jostled and never seen crowds (or sweat) like this. It was foul."

She added, "It was sweltering... People weren't panicked but furious."

Update, 8:04 p.m.: The MTA communications director Tim Minton issued a statement outlining what happened:

The 1-2-3-4-5-6 lines and Times Square shuttle experienced a total stoppage at 5:50pm due to a failure in the computer system that powers our signals in the A Division. For safety reasons trains were required to maintain their positions at the time of the interruption, and some of those trains were in between stations when that occurred. We worked to progressively move trains into stations while, simultaneously, technicians were successfully able to reboot the servers. We believe that no trains lost power or AC during the outage.

Service began to be restored at 7:16pm. Service on all affected lines has resumed with substantial residual delays. Power for lighting and air conditioning remained on while service was disrupted.

Investigation of the root cause of this system failure is underway. Service on lettered lines (B division) was not impacted. Riders displaced from impacted subway lines were permitted to board buses during the interruption. We do not currently have indications that this was heat or power related, but investigations are underway.

With reporting from Elizabeth Kim and Jake Offenhartz