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Moderator: GirlOnTheTrain
...In a famous medical study, two doctors traced a chain of errors that brought the wrong patient, a “Mrs. Morris,” to an operating room for an invasive heart procedure that she did not want, did not need and that no one had actually ordered for her.
It turned out that 17 separate mistakes were made before anyone realized that the wrong woman was on the table. Thankfully, Mrs. Morris was not harmed. The doctors said it was an “organizational accident,” meaning that one person could not have done it alone. Sticking tubes into the wrong person’s heart required mess-ups by many people.
One day, Mrs. Morris may be joined in the great case studies of near blunders by New York’s L train fiasco. This one took a team of people, too.
Right after the New Year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo made the startling announcement that New York City’s L subway line, whose East River tunnel was damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, could remain in service while fixes were carried out...
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo predicted last year that the Canarsie Tunnels between Brooklyn and Fourteenth Street in Manhattan on New York City Transit’s L train line would be repaired without a major service disruption. He was correct. Cuomo announced on April 26 that the service reductions necessitated by the tunnel repair project were over, and that both tunnels would be open for service on April 27 under the New York MTA Essential Service Plan. His announcement came on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of reduced service.
Superstorm Sandy damaged the tunnels in late 2012. The original repair plan called for demolishing and rebuilding the bench walls and embedded cables. This would have required a total service shutdown on the portion of the L line in Manhattan and under the East River to Brooklyn for 18 months. All stations in Brooklyn except one would have still provided service, but there would have been no subway service in Manhattan on 14th Street for the first time in almost 95 years.
With neighborhood development and a spurt of ridership growth in recent years along the L, NYCT’s first line upgraded to CBTC (communications-based train control), Cuomo looked toward a less-disruptive alternative. He called on the deans and senior faculty of the Columbia and Cornell University engineering schools for a second opinion. They recommended abandoning the cables encased in the tunnel’s bench walls, hanging new cables on racks mounted to the tunnel wall, and covering them with FRP (fiber reinforced polymer, a state-of-the-art protective material. A local supplier, Snake Tray®, provided the cable racking system.
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