The Three Words The MTA Doesnt Want Frustrated LIRR Riders To Remember

East Side Access

New York City’s crumbling infrastructure treated commuters to yet another failure during rush hour on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, this time along the Long Island Rail Road, which was brought to a complete standstill by a failure in the East River tunnels. It’s almost as if running thousands of trains a day through a century-old tunnel is a less-than-ideal situation.

According to the MTA, at some point this morning between 7:00 a.m. and 7:15 a.m., Amtrak experienced a problem with a third-rail in one of their four East River tunnels, leaving two trains — the 6:13 from Massapequa and the 6:12 from Babylon — stuck in the tunnels for hours. The Massapequa train was able to unload its 1,000 passengers at Penn Station by 8:26, while the Babylon train had a rougher go of it. Passengers weren’t able to get off the train until it was towed back to Hunters Point Avenue in Queens at 10:18.

The disruption of service caused a backup of trains which stretched well into Queens:

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In an email to the Voice, Amtrak said the disruption was caused by a “failure of a third rail component just outside of line #2 of the East River tunnels.” And they were “still working to determine a root cause.”

Read more: https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/05/30/the-three-words-the-mta-doesnt-want-frustrated-lirr-riders-to-remember/