Dangerous winds and ripped-down trees may gum up your train travels this weekend, MTA officials warned Friday.
With winds of up to 50mph forecast across the region, commuters should brace for Nor’easter-related impacts to commuter railroad, subway and paratransit service.
Janno Lieber, the transportation authority’s chairperson and chief executive, said crews will be operating off of a “well-worn playbook” in advance of and during a storm that will leave open-air tracks just beneath street level exposed to falling trees and branches.
“We have areas throughout the subway system where you’re in an open cut, a depressed area, and there are trees right next to it,” Lieber said. “And frequently, those trees are old and they’re knocked down by the wind — that is the single biggest concern I see right now.”
Limbs and downed trees have long caused headaches for the city’s sprawling subway system.
In 2024, The City Reporter found that nearly 800 subway trains were delayed by downed trees in the first six-and-a-half months of that year, a significant increase from the previous year, with most of the delays coming along the open air Brighton Line where B and Q trains run along tree-covered tracks in Brooklyn.
Lieber said the MTA recently reexamined the process for notifying property owners of their responsibility to maintain trees that may be at risk of tumbling onto the sections of the transit system that they overlook.
“In the era of torrential rainfall and all these weather events, we are paying even more attention to the risks that are created by people who just innocently have trees that might fall down on the tracks,” he said.
While the Nor’easter is expected to drop several inches of rain over the course of the weekend, Lieber said officials are hopeful that the expected rainfall will not overwhelm the city-owned sewer systems, as has occurred during some storms in recent years.
“The forecast is that the amounts of rain are several inches, but it looks like it’s going to happen over time, so the risk of those torrential rainfall flooding impacts is reduced,” he said.
In September 2021, the remnants of Hurricane Ida clobbered the city with three inches of rain within a single hour. Flash flooding erupted inside the 28th Street stop on the No. 1 line, creating a frightening image of geysers on the platform that a veteran train operator was pulling into the station said “looked like Niagara Falls.”
That storm upended service on most lines, with the disruptions lasting into the next day. It came on the heels of two earlier downpours that year that had already renewed calls to strengthen the city’s infrastructure against climate change.
Lieber described the Mamdani administration as “cooperative” in looking for ways to address its water collection systems in order to reduce floodwaters from cascading into subway stations.
“They’ve been cooperative, but that work has not yet been completed,” he said. “So we have some of the same vulnerabilities that we’ve had in the past.”
Mamdani issued a travel advisory in advance of the projected storm.
“If you’re traveling this weekend, give yourself extra time, check your train, ferry or flight before you head out and stay off low-lying coastal roads around high tide,” Mamdani said in a press statement Thursday. “If you live in a basement apartment, know your way out and be ready to move to a higher flood if conditions become dangerous.”
Transit officials also warned of potential impacts to Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road service, singling out flooding risks along the Hudson Line, as well as the main line section of the LIRR where downed power lines knocked out service earlier this week.
“You have the high winds then rain, at some point, the ground becomes saturated so the wind becomes that much more dangerous,” said Rob Free, the LIRR president. “But in terms of flooding, Island Park, Far Rockaway are particular concerns.”
“We have pumps set up there, we have high-water monitors there as well, we have plumbers there in response, just in case we do see any conditions.”
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The post Falling Tree Limbs Are in the Forecast This Weekend — And Might Delay Your Train, MTA Says appeared first on The City Reporter.
