Welcome to another hellish summer.
Nearly every MTA subway line was hit with delays this week as a heatwave sent temperatures soaring to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit above ground and freezing cold underground, leaving frustrated passengers sweating.
“What about the subway?,” said Reed Simmons, 44. “It’s hot. It’s really hot.”
“A tough city just got tougher.”
Wednesday’s morning rush hour was plagued by lingering problems on the A, E and F lines. By the afternoon rush hour, 18 service lines had experienced delays and other disruptions throughout the day, sometimes multiple times.
The combination of stifling heat and subway misery reached a fever pitch during Tuesday afternoon rush hour when a third rail outage near Essex Street caused service on the J and M lines to be halted, MTA officials said.
Further delays spread, with more than 10 disruptions occurring on the A, B, D and F lines throughout Tuesday, according to an MTA alert.
Caroline, a 27-year-old New York resident, told The Post that she tried to make what is normally a painless commute from the West Village to the East Village on the L train happen.
But faced with a 17-minute delay, she and her husband decided to hail a cab rather than put up with the wait, something she said other passengers did too.
“Having to wait more than three minutes in the tunnel is just not worth it because it’s so hot,” she said.
New Jersey Transportation Authority Similar delays were recorded While the heat is to blame, MTA Administrator Jano Lieber said the cause of subway congestion lies elsewhere: aging infrastructure built 100 years ago.
“This isn’t because of the heat,” Lieber said at a news conference announcing his apology on Wednesday. “This is because the infrastructure is so old.”
Lieber said a 55-year-old transformer failed at the Essex Street power station after it had been in use for 25 years.
Crews managed to make repairs, but Lieber warned that 25 percent of similar MTA transformers are rated in poor or marginal condition.
“This is what happens when you underinvest in critical infrastructure systems that are 100 years old and constantly aging,” he said.
MTA officials like Lieber had hoped that the $15 billion from now-suspended congestion pricing would help the transit agency invest in modern infrastructure projects.
But he acknowledged that congestion fee funds would have only been able to fix parts of the MTA’s many dysfunctional systems.
On Wednesday, tired, hot strap-hugging passengers sat on benches at stations including Times Square and Grand Central Terminal to catch their breath in the muggy air.
Even if trains were running on time, people holding on to the straps like Christy, 37, a Brooklyn native who commutes into Manhattan, said they were left with unpleasant memories of Tuesday’s nightmare.
“It was hot, it was really crowded, and we got stuck in traffic a lot,” she said of the D-Line delays.
— Additional reporting by Haley Brown
