Lights Flickered in New York City. Why Did the Subways Grind to a Halt?

Elected officials wanted to know why a brief power disruption was followed by widespread problems in the subway system.

For most New Yorkers, it was a blink-or-you-miss-it event. Lights flickered across the city on Sunday night. Some clocks reset. But for the city’s subway system, the power blip had a far greater impact: Five trains were stuck on the tracks in the Bronx and in a tunnel under the Harlem River, as delays snarled the network. Some riders evacuated subway cars on their own, violating Metropolitan Transportation Authority rules by climbing onto the tracks — and forcing subway officials to cut power to the third rail to avoid the possibility of electrocution. The moment underscored the fragility of the transit system, which has suffered from decades of disinvestment and was just beginning to embark on an ambitious program of infrastructure upgrades when the pandemic hit. The problems also threatened to undermine confidence in a system whose finances are already suffering from a pandemic-induced drop in ridership.