MTA Provides Update Following 4.0-Magnitude Aftershock
Service Continuing to Operate Safely and Normally on NYC Transit Subways and Buses, Paratransit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and Bridges & Tunnels
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is advising customers that the regional transit system is continuing to operate safely and normally following a 4.0-magnitude aftershock recorded in New Jersey at 5:59 p.m. that was felt throughout the service region.
After the initial 4.8-magnitude earthquake the MTA completed inspections of infrastructure and there were no reported issues. Following the aftershock standard follow-up inspections of MTA infrastructure will be conducted as necessary.
Frontline staff across the transit system have been instructed to report any abnormalities, with none being flagged. The MTA will continue to monitor the situation closely and follow protocols in place when emergencies such as today's earthquake and aftershock occur.
Transcript below includes remarks from MTA leadership who appeared with Mayor Adams at 12:10 this afternoon from New York City Emergency Management Headquarters.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber: Good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor Adams and Commissioner Iscol. I want to reassure New Yorkers that the service on the transit system, all aspects of the transit system, have remained continuously operating safely throughout the incident and has continued right to now. I've been in touch with the president of all the MTA agencies, starting with Bridges and Tunnels. Cathy Sheridan, the president of MTA Bridges and Tunnels, is here, but also New York City Transit, Long Island Railroad, and Metro North.
Initial inspections of all facilities have been completed, and there are initial further inspections ongoing, emphasizing that the seven bridges operated by MTA have been inspected, and I want to emphasize those were designed to withstand much stronger seismic impacts than we experienced today.
Our frontline staff across the system have been instructed to report any abnormalities. There have been none so far flagged, and of course, we're going to continue to monitor the situation very closely. We have an open communications bridge with all of our MTA agencies to report, as I said, any abnormality that they encounter. So far, the input on that has been zero.
We're going to let riders know if there are any impacts to service, but there are none. Just as the chancellor said the school system is operating fully, so is the MTA transit system without disruptions caused by the earthquake. I want to thank Mayor Adams, your entire team, and also Governor Hochul, with whom I've been in touch, for their leadership throughout this challenging moment for the city and the region. Thank you.
Question: How are you? Can you walk us through what the process is of inspecting all the bridges as well as the tunnels in the subway system right now?
Janno Lieber: Cathy Sheridan, do you mind? Cathy, come on up. Sure. Want to talk about the bridges?
MTA Bridges and Tunnels President Catherine Sheridan: Sure. Good afternoon, I'm Cathy Sheridan, President of MTA Bridges and Tunnels. We go out and do preliminary inspections. They were dispatched within about five minutes of the earthquake occurring. All the preliminary results came back negative, no impacts to our facilities. We have also mobilized all of our structural inspection teams, which do our biennial inspections on a regular basis. They are now out on the ground. We expect to have results from them by 4 p.m. But again, we don't expect an earthquake of this magnitude to have any impact on our facilities.
Question: I'm sorry. With the tunnels and the subways, what's the process for inspecting all those?
Cathy Sheridan: For the subway, I won't talk about the subways. I'll let the chair talk about that. For our two tunnels, the Hugh Carey Tunnel and the Queens Midtown Tunnel, tunnels are very resilient for seismic impacts. They move with the ground. Again, it's a hands-on inspection. We go and do visual inspection to see if there are any damages.
Janno Lieber: Yes, and it's exactly the same in the subway system. We have folks who routinely walk the track and inspect structure as well as track, and those protocols are in place.