Andrew Cuomo, Consolidated Edison Dispute Cause of Subway Outages
June 09 2017 - 5:59AM
Dow Jones News
By Paul Berger
One month after a power outage snarled the morning commute for
hundreds of thousands of subway riders, its cause is still
disputed.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who controls the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, blamed the May 9 outage -- as well as a
similar power loss two days earlier -- on utility Consolidated
Edison Inc.
At the time, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo demanded that the company
"identify the cause and propose a real and improved response plan
for the future."
Consolidated Edison, however, has found no evidence that it
could have caused the May 9 outage, said Robert Schimmenti, senior
vice president of electric operations at the utility.
He added that a transformer failure at a substation on May 7
shouldn't have been sufficient to cause subway disruption on that
day either.
Mr. Schimmenti explained that the subway is powered by multiple
transformers, and when one transformer fails it causes a power
disturbance lasting less than a second, the kind of fluctuation
that might cause a lightbulb to flicker. The MTA's equipment
"should be designed to handle a disturbance," he said.
Consolidated Edison previously accepted responsibility for a
power outage on April 21 at the 7th Avenue and 53rd Street subway
station in Manhattan.
MTA spokesman Stephen Morello said that the transit agency
continues to "believe that the May 7 and 9 failures were the
responsibility of ConEd."
Mr. Cuomo has directed the state's Department of Public Service
and the MTA to investigate the April and May outages.
James Allen, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said: "The investigation
is ongoing and a full report is expected to be completed early this
summer."
The transformer failure on May 7 knocked out signal equipment at
DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn, causing delays for several hours.
The signal system went down again two days later at about 7:30
a.m., affecting the B, D, N, Q and R trains and sending disruption
cascading through the system through the rush hour.
The subway's antiquated signal system is a prime cause of
delays. Upgrading to a more efficient system will cost billions of
dollars and take decades to complete.
In the wake of the disruptions, Brooklyn Borough President Eric
Adams asked the city's independent budget office to study the
economic cost of the outages to workers, businesses and in the form
of lost tax revenue.
A spokesman for the budget office said that study is under
way.
Write to Paul Berger at Paul.Berger@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 09, 2017 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
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