MTA officials are aiming to have F train service fully restored by the Thursday morning rush after a train derailed Wednesday in Brooklyn — the second to skip the tracks in less than a week and third inside of a month.
No injuries were reported in the latest derailment, which occurred around 12:20 p.m. as a northbound train carrying 37 people neared the elevated Neptune Avenue station in Coney Island after departing the West 8th Street—New York Aquarium stop.
New York City Transit President Richard Davey pointed to a “track issue” as a possible factor in the derailment, which came days after a pair of trains collided last Thursday at 96th Street along the No. 1 line in Manhattan.
Photos obtained by THE CITY show the F train came off the rails, with its wheels atop the track ties.
“The track needs to be straight in order for a train to run on top of it safely and without a slow-speed derailment as we had here,” Davey said. “So we’re going to look at that and see.”
Subway derailments with passengers involved are rare — prior to last week’s incident, there had not been one since September 20, 2020, when an A train carrying 135 riders ran off the tracks at the 14th Street stop at Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Officials pinned that derailment on a man hurling debris onto the tracks.
“Derailments do happen — they shouldn’t, but they do from time to time,” Davey said. “And as I said, we’ll take a look to see what the issue was here, but customers should feel safe taking the service.”
Firefighters removed passengers from the disabled train onto two rescue trains in what Fire Chief Mike Mandala described as a “relatively easy operation” that took about an hour to complete.
Feds Looking Into System
The latest incident comes as the National Transportation Safety Board digs into last Thursday’s two-train collision at 96th Street and what NTSB officials have described as “a look at the entire system — including how it is managed and supervised.”
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy noted last week that the Jan. 4 collision came on the heels of a partial derailment weeks earlier in Brooklyn.
“This is the second accident on New York City Transit’s property in 37 days,” she said at the time. “That’s not typical.”
The Dec. 20 derailment involved an out-of-service N train as it came out of the Stillwell Avenue train yard.
‘A Fluke’
According to the MTA, most derailments take place in yards or involve work trains. Agency statistics show there were six derailments last year, seven in 2022 and 10 in 2021.
Andrew Albert, an MTA board member and chair of the New York City Transit Riders Council, cited the overall safety record of the subway system, even while conceding “it’s not a great look” to have three derailments inside of a month.
“I think most normal riders would know it’s a fluke because there are thousands of trains running and a minuscule number of passengers are ever experiencing any kind of crash or derailment,” Albert told THE CITY. “It’s a lot safer than driving.”
The latest derailment severely disrupted service along the F line in Brooklyn into Wednesday night, with no service between Avenue X and Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue and limited service between Church Avenue and Avenue X.
The MTA ran limited free shuttle bus service between Coney Island-Stillwell and directed riders onto other subway and bus lines, but officials expected F line service would be fully restored in time for the morning rush, with a crane brought in to get the train that skipped the tracks back on the rails.
“This will not be nearly as complicated as the issues we had last week,” Davey said.