Aug 8, 2007 7:52 pm US/Eastern
MTA Says Blame Rests With National Weather Service
Bloomberg Says Sewer System More Likely Culprit
by Marcia Kramer
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
It was the third time in seven months that New York City's subways were catastrophically halted by rain, and so it was to be expected that there was a lot of official finger pointing Wednesday.
And believe it or not even the National Weather Service took a major hit.
"A major factor was that there was no notice that we would have this storm," said Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Elliot Sander.
The near total crash of the subway system Wednesday was certainly a black eye for transit officials, but blaming the troubles on the National Weather Service? Would more notice have helped officials cope with the 2.5 inches of rain that was dumped on the city in two hours Wednesday morning?
"Whether or not we're too reliant on the National Weather Service that I don't know," Gov. Eliot Spitzer said. "I don't know if we want to build an alternative weather predicting service inside the MTA."
Click here for the very latest subway advisories.The real problem seems to be not the weather predictions, but the weather. The fact is the subways and trains aren't weatherproof.
"The sewer system designed many years ago was not intelligently designed to handle runoff from the streets," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Transit experts say its a drainage issue. When there's a lot of rain in a short period of time the city sewers fill up, so there's no room for the MTA to pump the water from its system. It sits on the track and forms lakes, big lakes.
For example, at 11 a.m. Wednesday:
* There was 26 inches of water in front of the pump room at the Hillside Avenue station.
* 24 inches of water at 38th Street and Northern Boulevard
* And water just below the third rail at Vescey Street
"We have a design issue that we need to think about," Spitzer said.
Meanwhile, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn suggested it may be that the pumping equipment is old.
Not true says the Transit Authority, which said in the last 15 years its spent $357 million to fix the system's 289 pump rooms
Spitzer has asked the MTA to look at all the factors and report back to him in 30 days. Let's just hope it doesn't rain again in the next month.
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