MTA Workers Claim Agency Risking Derailment
Some MTA workers are claiming that the agency is risking another possible NYC Subway derailment after spotting some loose rails strewn in the middle of tracks on the 
& 
between Manhattan & Brooklyn. Dan Rivoli of the New York Daily News has more:
The MTA apparently hasn’t learned its lesson after a 2017 subway derailment in Harlem injured more than 30 people and turned morning rush hour into hell on wheels.
Two track workers with 15 years’ work experience between them told the Daily News history could have repeated itself because loose rails strewn in the middle of A and C line tracks between Manhattan and Brooklyn were not secured in any way.
A piece of unsecured scrap rail was the culprit for the morning-rush-hour A train derailment near 125th St. on June 27, 2017.
MTA officials told The News the rails left on the A and C line tracks posed no safety risk because they were on shallower track beds with different layouts than in the Harlem crash, preventing the possibility of them angling upward obtrusively. A loose rail was secured after a News inquiry.
“Out of an abundance of caution we had crews immediately inspect the area, further secure the rails in question, and confirm there is no safety risk,” MTA spokesman Shams Tarek told The News in a statement.
Startled workers first spotted new loose rails while working a repair job during their overnight shift that began Oct. 3. They saw long pieces of welded rail and shorter scrap rails resting on joint bars in the middle of the tracks without anything holding them down between Fulton Center in lower Manhattan and High St. in Brooklyn Heights.
“The rails were all over the place, on the trough, on the side,” said one of the workers, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive work issues. “Some of them were pretty precarious.”
The unsecured rails were still there Friday when a Daily News reporter riding a C train chugging through the underwater tunnel into Brooklyn spotted them near the High St. station.
Click here for the complete report.
Even though the agency has said no safety risks were present, I am siding with the workers in finding these actions shocking & quite frankly upsetting. I don’t care if the risk was .0000000000001%, the MTA should have made sure those loose rails were either removed or completely secured. Such inaction is absolutely disgusting & reeks of incompetence. Get your act together before people potentially can get hurt!
xoxo Transit Blogger
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