Fire knocks out PATH

Ugly rush hour ensues

Swarms of commuters were forced to travel downtown to get home via Path yesterday. A morning fire knocked out service to most of the city’s PATH stations. | Aharon Rothschild/METRO

Andrew Garib, METRO New York | Link | PDF | A track fire on a PATH train line caused commuter chaos yesterday, shutting down five stations during rush hour and sending would-be passengers scrambling for a way from Manhattan to New Jersey.

The 9:56 a.m. flare-up damaged a power cable between Ninth Street and Christopher Street stations, causing PATH to suspend service in both directions between 33rd Street and Journal Square station in Jersey City and between 33rd Street and Hoboken, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said.

The service closed stations at 33rd, 23rd, 14th, Ninth and Christopher streets, leaving the World Trade Center station to handle all Newark- and Hoboken-bound trains. Additional capacity was added to lines departing from World Trade Center, where PATH employees said it was much busier than usual.

Norman Thusi, 58, said his commute yesterday from midtown to Montclair, N.J.,—redirected via the subway and a packed PATH train—was going to be much slower than the usual one hour. He was also caught up in the mess on his way into the city. “It was horrible, very horrible,” he said.

PATH also sent additional agents to shuttered stations to advise confused commuters.

As of 9:30 last night, service had not been restored.

This isn’t the first time PATH, with a daily ridership of 250,000, was slowed by a fire. On April 30, a manhole blaze disrupted signals and shut down service during a busy weekday evening rush.

Published 08.06.11 02:00:00 -0500 GMT | Posted by Andrew Garib on 08.06.11 | |

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