Subways swamped as 1, 2 and 3 trains face delays after Times Square water main break
A broken water main at Times Square poured cold water on New Yorkers’ morning commute Tuesday.
The break stopped all service on the 7th Ave. lines between 96th St. and Chambers St. in Manhattan early Tuesday morning, with 2 Trains being routed up the East Side on the 5 line.
By 11 a.m., trains on the 1, 2 and 3 lines were running with heavy delays on their usual routes after MTA workers spent the early morning hours clearing water from the tracks.
Roughly 150 MTA track and maintenance workers responded to the break around 3 a.m. Tuesday morning, said MTA’s head of New York City Transit, Rich Davey.
“There’s still some work to do, but we were able to get service up and running, so I want to thank them,” he said.
The break dumped 1.8 million gallons of water onto the tracks in a matter of hours, Davey said.
Work crews schlepped additional pumps down the stairs to supplement the station’s built-in pumping system and clear the water shortly before 11 a.m.
The MTA boss said the evening commute should be unaffected by what’s left of the mop-up operation.
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The break, Davey said, was “not our leak,” and took place in a water main operated by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection
“But anything that leaks in this city finds its way into our system,” he added.
The transit chief also expressed concern over the amount of time it took to shut down the leaking main.
“I think it took about 90 minutes for that water to be shut off, and in any instance a minute matters,” he said.
“We’ll obviously work with them to see how we can do a better job, how they can do a better job,” he added.
Edward Timbers, a DEP spokesman, said the break occurred overnight in a 20-inch-wide main, and that a portion of the broken pipe was being analyzed to determine the cause of the leak.
Repairs were ongoing as of noon Tuesday, Timbers said, and most buildings in the area retained running water.