Flaming trash on the tracks turned the morning commute into a nightmare on Wednesday, with multiple subway lines snarled around Times Square.
In the heart of rush hour, fire crews were called to the Times Sq/West 42nd Street stop just before 8 am for a rubbish fire on the tracks and spent nearly an hour firefighting before declaring the all clear around an hour later, according to FDNY.
Riders across Manhattan and Brooklyn were left stewing on crowded platforms and crawling trains as delays rippled along the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, A, B, C, D and E lines.
Kathy M. said she moved over to Sixth Avenue to take one of the BDFM-line trains.
“There are delays every day,” Kathy told The Post. “They should be more on top of things we have jobs we have to get to.”
Even as late as noon more than a dozen trains were still not back to full service.
“Today it felt like it was nonstop and it did put me behind on my day,” Kathy said.
A spokesperson for the MTA hinted there were more issues than just the fire but declined to offer any specifics about the grueling delays. It wasn’t clear what started the trash fire.
“The customer communications speak for themselves. Riders were notified in real time about the various unrelated conditions that arose,” an MTA spokesperson told The Post.
The MTA provides service updates through its app, website, digital screens in stations and by email and text, according to a spokesperson.
Last month, MTA heads bragged NYC subways were on time around 80% of the time. But they were found to be excluding days with bad weather from MTA’s on-time performance measures to juice the numbers.
“The delays don’t really surprise me anymore I feel like everyday it’s a new thing,” one rider who asked to be anonymous told The Post.
