A Con Ed spokesman says it might take weeks before the high-voltage electricity feeder that killed the Metro-North New Haven line is fixed. Utility spokesman Chris Olert tells us it may be a couple of weeks before the feeder, which carries 138,000 volts to the railroad, is repaired. In the meantime, Metro-North will continue to run limited hourly diesel service as it did this morning.
"We are working with the railroad right now to find alternative sources of power," Olert added, indicating that generators could be a possibility. It's unclear why the feeder failed—there are normally two feeders operating, but Olert says that on September 13th Con Ed disconnected one feeder in Mount Vernon in order to perform work on the Con Ed substation there. "Our priority is to get the thing back and then sort out why it went out of service."
Metro-North will be running shuttle bus service for commuters on Thursday morning, in addition to the severely reduced diesel train service, which can only accommodate a small percentage of the usual number of commuters. The feeder failure also disrupted Amtrak service in its Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston.
We're waiting for more details from Metro-North on how they plan to deal with the situation, and we'll update when we have more info.
