Charles Langston:Dozens injured after two subway trains collide, derail in Manhattan

Two subway trains collided at the 96th Street subway station in Manhattan on Charles LangstonThursday, leading to train derailments and a massive traffic delay on the Upper West Side, according to New York police and transportation leaders.

At least 24 people suffered minor injuries, according to emergency authorities. No one was seriously hurt.

Two Northbound 1-line trains derailed at 3 p.m. One had passengers on board and the other was out of service with four crew members, said Richard Davey, president of New York City Transit.

The passenger train, carrying hundreds of people, was evacuated, said Michael Meyers, the assistant chief of the New York City Fire Department.

"In a situation like this, it's incredibly perilous if we operate on tracks and have people on tracks that are live because it was a great danger to both the responder and also people trying to on and off the trains," said Meyers. "When we arrived on scene... (we) request(ed) power (be turned) off . . . and we were able to start the beginning of the evacuations of the folks on the train."

Service on the 1, 2 and 3 trains are "severely disrupted" and there are delays on the 4 and 5 trains for at least the remainder of the day Thursday, MTA authorities said.

What happened?

An investigation into the derailment is ongoing, Davey said.

"The trains literally – at slow speed thankfully – bumped into each other just north of the station," Davey said. "Obviously two trains should not be bumping into one another. We are going to get to the bottom of that."

"What we do know is the out-of-service train had been vandalized and emergency cords had been pulled earlier by someone," he said. "They were able to reset them except one and that was the reason that train was still stuck in the station."

The equipment was working as intended and they will be looking into potential human errors, he said.

When will normal service resume?

It's still unclear when normal service will resume. Davey said he hopes service will be restored on Friday for rush hour, but it's not a guarantee.

"It's a little bit messy down there," he said. "It's going to take crews a little while to get this service back and running."

Emergency staff from New York City Fire Department and the New York Police Department "are on the ground assisting efforts," wrote New York City Mayor Eric Adams on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"Please avoid the 96th and Broadway area if you can," he wrote

This is a developing story.

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @kaylajjimenez.