Water main break near Times Square halts subway service, closes streets
A massive water main break in Times Square wrecked the Tuesday morning commute when it flooded out the Seventh Avenue Subway, forcing the MTA to suspend or reroute the No. 1, 2 and 3 trains for eight hours, officials said.
An estimated 1.8 million gallons of water flooded into that portion of the Times Square transit hub over the roughly 90 minute-period it took the Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the sewer system, to turn off the water.
The pipe first burst around 3 a.m. and was eventually shut off by 4:30 a.m, according to DEP and the MTA. Subway service was restored but running with delays by 11 a.m., though officials hoped it would be back to normal before the evening commute.
The MTA said it received no reports of crowding despite the hours-long disruption, which it chalked up to the lighter ridership common in late August with the public schools yet to reopen for the fall and many straphangers out on vacation.
“The good news, if there’s any good news, is that we’re the week before Labor Day, so we should have been able to handle the capacity,” said Rich Davey, the president of the MTA’s city transit division.
“I heard of no crowding issues,” he added. “But, if this were two weeks from now, a Tuesday after Labor Day, we certainly would have been more challenged.”
DEP said it was investigating the cause of the rupture.
The loss of the Seventh Avenue Subway, which is one of the busiest in the city, cascaded across the rest of the subway system.
Officials were forced to axe all No. 1 and No. 3 lines between Chambers Street and 96th Street, while the No. 2 line was diverted to run along the Lexington Avenue subway, which typically serves the No. 4, 5 and 6 lines.
That, in turn, caused major delays along the East Side as officials also had to use the same subway tracks to move emergency equipment into Midtown to respond to the flooding.
Officials told straphangers to avoid those lines during the morning commute and opt for the letter lines, like Broadway’s N, Q, R, W; 8th Avenue’s A, C and E; and 6th Avenue’s B, D, F, M.
The flooding also forced the city to shut down Seventh Avenue from 39th to 41st streets and 39th Street between Sixth and Eighth avenues for portions of the morning.
