The 190th Street A train station in Washington Heights is buried so deep underground it could act as a fallout shelter in the case of a nuclear attack.
Or at least that’s what Dr. Morris Shamos, a New York University physics researcher, concluded in 1951. He’d conducted tests using cosmic rays that determined "radiation from an atomic bomb would be extremely unlikely to reach the station," the New York Times reported.
On The Way stumbled across Shamos’ study while reporting on the MTA’s plan to finally renovate the 190th Street station, which has paint coming off the walls and chipped ceilings. The station is buried beneath 140 feet of bedrock at Fort Tryon Park. It takes a 30-second elevator ride to get between its upper entrance and mezzanine.
Around the same time as Shamos’ study, city officials looked into using subway stations in Washington Heights like 190th Street and the even deeper 191st Street station as potential fallout shelters. The Board of Transportation also pitched building shelters inside the planned — but never built — Second Avenue subway. The survey came a year after the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic weapon, ushering in a new chapter of the Cold War.
City officials at the time proposed fitting out deep underground stations with shelter rooms that had plumbing, pantries and first aid kits. But those plans were shelved due to a lack of federal funding.
WNYC Archives
MTA officials did not answer questions about whether those subway stations could serve as fallout shelters in a pinch. But the MTA did say transit officials have participated in workshops that determined subway stations aren’t ideal for a long term stay because they lack access to food and water.
The most recent guidance from the city about what to do during a nuclear attack did not mention the subways. In 2022, the city released an eyebrow-raising public service announcement directing New Yorkers to shelter indoors, away from windows “if the big one has hit. After the announcement sparked some alarm, Mayor Eric Adams explained it “was right after the attacks in the Ukraine and OEM (the Office of Emergency Management) took a very proactive step to say let's be prepared.”
Since the program launched roughly three months ago, SCOUT teams have sent at least 15 people to the hospital involuntarily for a psychiatric assessment. Gothamist rode along for a shift. Read more.
At a tense City Council hearing yesterday, top NYPD officials argued that increased law enforcement has kept the subway system safe, while some councilmembers questioned whether stepped-up policing and the presence of National Guard soldiers are actually deterring crime. Read more.
A crowd of terrified passengers trying to flee Brooklyn's Fulton Street station after a recent shooting on an A train were forced to leave single file because an emergency exit door wouldn’t open, multiple riders told Gothamist. Read more.
Four shootings have now taken place in the subway system since the start of 2024. We put together a timeline. Read more.
The city’s transportation department is launching a multilingual e-bike public safety campaign in response to a soaring number of deadly crashes on the bikes. Read more.
Renovation work at an MTA subway ventilation plant on the Lower East Side has turned a once bustling street next to a park into a noisy construction site that’s become a haven for drug use for more than five years — and neighbors say there’s no end in sight. Read more.
According to an internal MTA document, the agency collected 25,628 comments in its final round of congestion pricing public input sessions — and positive comments outnumbered anti-toll comments by about 2 to 1. (Streetsblog)
“A lot of us had dreams of having a career with the MTA,” said one 21-year-old Brooklynite who’s among a group of transit aficionados who break into out-of-service subway cars and take them for little joyrides. (Curbed)
Curious commuter
“Will we get a subway line to LaGuardia Airport?”
- Chrisostomos, Nassau County
What Clayton says:
Don’t count on a train of any kind to LaGuardia Airport. Gov. Kathy Hochul last year announced the Port Authority would move ahead with a plan to boost bus service to the Queens airport, adding more priority routes for the Q70 bus from Jackson Heights and establishing a new nonstop shuttle route from the Astoria Boulevard subway station on the N and W lines. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had previously championed a plan to build an AirTrain to LaGuardia or $2.1 billion. The project would have required riders to transfer and pay a second fare at Willets Point. Hochul nixed that plan shortly after she took office in 2021.
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Service Tips
Friday night through early Monday morning:
In Manhattan, Downtown 1 trains will skip Christopher St-Sheridan Sq, Houston St, Canal St and Franklin St.
In the Bronx, Manhattan-bound D trains will skip 182-183 Sts, 174-175 Sts, 170 St, 167 St, 161 St-Yankee Stadium and 155 St.
J trains won’t run between Crescent St, Brooklyn and Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer, Queens.
Through the first quarter of 2024 the M train will not travel above 57th street, and the F train will run on the E line between Rockefeller Center and Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave. These changes to the F line means there's no subway service at Roosevelt Island, but the MTA is providing shuttle buses instead. More details here.
Every borough currently has one free bus route. Find yours.
This week in NYC transit history
MTA cuts subway service as NYC becomes COVID epicenter
It either feels like yesterday or a lifetime ago — but it’s been four years since New York City shut down for COVID. And on March 24, 2020, the MTA announced major cuts to subway service that would last far longer than officials expected at the time. The transit system was a ghost town as schools, restaurants and other venues were closed as most New Yorkers stayed home. The MTA suspended service on the B, W and Z lines, cut 35% of service on its commuter railroads, and slashed bus service by more than a quarter.
That was just the beginning: Days later, the MTA confirmed one of its employees died of COVID. More than 100 other agency employees would perish from the disease over the following two months as the city became the epicenter of the pandemic. By May, the governor ordered the subway shut down overnight for the first time in its history. It wasn’t until 2022 that the MTA had enough crews to run its regularly scheduled service.
