A power outage at New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority main control centre caused major delays on the majority of the city’s trains, and headaches for commuters.
The New York Daily News reported that an electrical problem first occurred around 1.30pm local time, debilitating the control centre’s ability to monitor train traffic. By 2 pm, most of the trains had shut down.
Passengers claimed to have waited for up to 30 minutes for some trains, and they were inconvenienced in hot, stuffy subway stations during the humid summer afternoon.
“It was stifling in there,” Wanda Phillips, 72, told the Daily News. “It was crowded and hot and that’s when tempers flare up.”
Hundreds of commuters throughout the city packed into stations waiting indeterminate amounts of time for their trains without having information about arrivals.
“We kept hearing there were delays but no one knew why,” 28-year-old John Nowacki said. “It was very annoying.”
A spokesperson for the MTA confirmed to The Independent that the trains are “running close to normal service.”
“The cause remains under investigation at this time.”
