CityLab Daily: How Ida Flooded New York’s Subway
Also today: How federal aid to states is being used, and cities battered by the pandemic find new ways to survive.
Commuters walk into a flooded 3rd Avenue subway station in New York.
Photographer: David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesThe remnants of Hurricane Ida dropped over 3 inches of rain on New York City on Wednesday in just a single hour. In that time, the subway system flooded, with terrifying scenes of stormwater gushing down stairways and trains plowing through sheets of water.
The system will continue to flood, in part because it was designed to, writes John Surico: When rainwater overwhelms storm drains it seeps downward, through innumerable surface-level gaps and subway entrances. Like much of U.S.’s aging infrastructure, it also wasn’t built to withstand the increasingly intense storms climate change promises to bring. And if this summer was any indication, transit agencies like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will have to come up with a better game plan for regular and severe rainfall. Today in CityLab: Why New York’s Subway Keeps Flooding