A New York City subway train derailed Thursday after colliding with another train at low speed, leaving more than 20 people with minor injuries and causing major service disruptions across Manhattan during the afternoon rush hour, authorities said.
At about 3 p.m. on the Upper West Side, a 1 train carrying about 300 passengers and an out-of-service Metropolitan Transportation Authority train with four workers on board hit each other near the 96th Street station, police and transit officials said at the scene. A “derailment” is when at least one wheel of a train leaves the track.
Photos posted on social media by city emergency management officials showed the passenger train partially off the tracks in an area that had a track-switching mechanism. Officials said there were no immediate signs of equipment failure and investigators were seeing if human error was involved.
IIRC the NY subway is infamous for running on ridiculously outdated, patchwork tech because they aren’t allowed to shut down long enough to implement the necessary modern improvements, nor does the MTA get the funds to do so.
There are plenty of subway systems where this could never have happened.
Indeed, the whole system is massively complex and serves a megacity with one of the world’s oldest systems 24/7. Maintenance is insanely costly and difficult. It’s like repairing airplanes while in flight.
I believe the New York subway system moves about the same amount of riders per day as the entire US continental air travel system. Imagine trying to keep that whole thing running when it is a political target that rich people use as basically a dog whistle for shitting on poor people. You also have to put these kinds of accidents into perspective with that kind of magnitude of rides that went perfectly fine.
Yep, more by over a half million people more per day on the subway in one city. =)
It is a pretty mind blowing technological achievement even though plenty of other cities have better systems, the numbers are just so big for subways.
Makes sense for “the city that never sleeps”