This morning, New Yorkers are probably viewing their morning commute with trepidation, after yesterday's 7 train mess, which left 750 people trapped in subway cars during an explosion. The explosion was caused when the subway went over a metal plate that was "improperly secured" by MTA workers and became "unhinged" from train vibrations, according to Newsday. That's not the only thing that was unhinged yesterday! And the MTA was trying to understand why no one noticed the huge hole in the subway ceiling that led to Wednesday's 4/5/6 train evening delays (the third of three delays that day). One former structural official tells the Times, "What happened to the concrete? Where did it go? When something like that falls into the subway, somebody would have to see it." That would be too easy for someone to notice, a huge chunk of concrete. Especially since it seems that the Transit Authority made the hole themselves 12 years ago. Sigh. It is too much to hope for that the MTA can check the tunnels. Gothamist wonders if the MTA should hire a bunch of volunteer subway enthusiasts to inspect the system; they would be carefully screened, of course, and the MTA could let them loose in underground and they'd come back with all sorts of great photographs.
WABC's Eyewitness 7 on bigger problems in the subway's future (great facts like there are an average of 4 subway fires a day).
