The substations that power the subway’s third rail are not being properly maintained by MTA workers, according to an agency watchdog report released Thursday, nearly two years after an explosion in an electrical room left thousands of commuters stranded underground.
The report published by the office of the MTA Inspector General found that not all of the required maintenance of substations in 2024 were performed by the transit agency. The report said that 19% of all field maintenance checks that year — when transit employees complete a set of tasks over multiple site visits — were not performed, leading to “an increased risk of equipment failures, which can affect system operations and worker safety.”
The audit came in response to a short-circuit explosion in December 2024 at a substation on State Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The explosion was so powerful that it blew a door off its hinges. Over 4,000 subway riders were stranded between the Jay Street-MetroTech and Hoyt-Schermerhorn stations for several hours amid a service meltdown.
Substation “nonconformities,” or defects in the facilities that needed to be repaired, were also not properly logged and tracked in 2024, according to the report.
NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said the transit agency is taking steps to improve the electric infrastructure of the subway system so that it’s safer and more reliable to the public. He said the agency had already implemented several key reforms following the substation failure.
“Missed inspections of power substations are unacceptable and leadership of the Power Division has been restructured — splitting oversight of power and signals — to focus on improving maintenance practices and upgrading critical infrastructure,” Crichlow said in a statement. “Since the matters of two years ago, 30 substations have been rehabilitated, in addition to a planned $3 billion investment in new power systems, all providing relief from challenges of maintaining century-old infrastructure.”
Investigators for the watchdog also wrote that unqualified MTA staff assessed the damage from the 2024 explosion, hindering efforts to prevent such an incident from occurring again.
“The transformer was taken apart during this assessment, which compromised any follow-up evaluation that might have been performed by a subject matter expert … NYC Transit should develop clear guidance and detailed post-incident protocols for staff to follow, including the hiring of a third party consultant when expertise outside of NYC Transit is needed to assess any equipment that had a catastrophic failure and to make recommendations to reduce the risk of future incidents,” the report said.
The MTA’s current five-year construction plan centers on upgrading the system’s outdated infrastructure, including substations, train yards, subway cars and subway stations.
