2024 New York City Subway derailment

2024 New York City Subway derailment
The site of the derailment
Details
Date	January 3, 2024 (2024-01-03) c. 3:00 p.m. EST
Standort	Near 96th Street station, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City
Coordinates	40°47′42″N 73°58′17″W
Land	Vereinigte Staaten
Line	1 train
Operator	New York City Subway
Incident type	Derailment
Cause	Under investigation
Statistics
Trains	2
Passengers	Approximately 300
Deaths	0
Injured	25

On January 4, 2024, a New York City Subway train derailed causing at least 26 people, mostly passengers, to suffer minor injuries. The incident happened when the first car of a 1 train collided with a disabled train that had been vandalized, both consisting of R62As, just north of the 96th Street station. Around 300 people were evacuated off the train involved in the collision.

The National Transportation Safety Board, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and other authorities are investigating the incident. They stated that the disabled train, which was heading uptown, had been taken out of service because a passenger repeatedly pulled the emergency brake, resulting in the train being stalled near West 79th Street. That train was taken out of service, and the moving train, which was trying to bypass the stalled train using the express track, hit it while switching to the local track.

Incident

At 2:11 p.m. EST, train 1345, preformed an emergency stop due to an unruly passenger pulling emergency break valve cords on the first five railcars. It was stated that a "good samaritan" alerted two K-9 officers when the incident happened. The operator was unable to reset the emergency breaks and subsequently moved to the 79th Street Station to drop off passengers. A railcar inspector was also unable to reset the breaks forcing the train to be taken out of service and moved to a rail yard by using the local train (track 4). The incident forced 1 trains to be rerouted via the express track.

The out of service train, now consisting of four workers was being operated from car six in the middle of the consist by a transit system supervisor. A flagger was in the lead car helping to coordinate the train movement. The flagger stated that near the 96th Street Station he lost radio communications with the supervisor. Due to the lost radio communications the supervisor did not receive the command to stop prior to signal requiring them to do so at the end of the station. Trip-stops, designed to stop trains that pass signals requiring trains to stop did not activate due to the disabled breaks.

The collision occurred around 3:00 p.m. EST when a northbound 1 train, train 1427, was switching from the express (track 3) to the local track (track 4) and was rear ended by an out of service which did not stop as required. Two cars of train 1345 derailed while train 1427 had three cars derail. Train 1427 was carrying 300 passengers at the time and had to be evacuated.

Aftermath

The derailment caused significant disruptions along the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. In a press conference on January 5, officials stated that the disruptions would continue throughout the day, hoping that service would be restored later that same day. 1 train service was suspended between 137th Street–City College station and Times Square–42nd Street station, 2 trains ran along the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, and 3 trains were suspended between 135th Street and Times Square–42nd Street. 1 trains ran express in the southbound direction while 3 trains ran local in the southbound direction between Times Square-42nd Street and Chambers Street for the duration of service disruptions. Some 4 and 5 trains made local stops in Brooklyn and 5 trains in the Bronx also ran local.

On January 5, limited service was partially restored on the 1 and 3 routes (1 trains running express in the northbound direction from 96th Street to 137th Street-City College), although service was not restored between 96th Street and Times Square. Limited southbound 2 service was also restored, while northbound 2 service continued to run via the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. On January 6, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the MTA would restore full service overnight that same day to the early morning of January 7, and service was fully restored at 4:45 a.m. the next morning.

Second derailment

On January 10, a second, unrelated derailment occurred around 12:20 p.m. when the fourth car of a northbound F train jumped the tracks between the Neptune Avenue and West Eighth Street–New York Aquarium stations in Brooklyn. No one was injured.

See also

• 1905 Ninth Avenue derailment
• 1918 Malbone Street wreck
• 1928 Times Square derailment
• 1991 Union Square derailment
• 1995 Williamsburg Bridge subway collision

External links

• Media related to January 2024 96th Street derailment at Wikimedia Commons