As local weather change results in report rainfalls, town’s 120-year-old subway system is extra weak to flooding than ever.
A flooded flooring is blocked off within the forty second Avenue Instances Sq. subway station throughout a rain storm in New York.
(Jeenah Moon / Getty)
Solely two months earlier than Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York Metropolis’s mayor at a decommissioned subway station beneath Metropolis Corridor on January 1, stations throughout town flooded following a record rainfall.
Movies of “waterfalls” forming inside stations circulated on-line, reflecting what has change into a brand new norm of commuter chaos amid excessive climate occasions. In July, movies of passengers climbing their way out of a submerged station equally went viral. In the course of the summer season, riders face sweltering warmth in poorly ventilated stations, as 90 levels Fahrenheit days and dire warmth waves change into more likely. In August, New York Governor Hochul ordered an investigation into New York Metropolis transit’s local weather vulnerability.
As a largely underground system, the subway is profoundly weak to flooding as local weather change intensifies downpours, fuels coastal erosion, and raises sea ranges that threaten to inundate total neighborhoods. The necessity to adapt and improve the 120-year-old system, constructed for a completely different climate, has change into extra pronounced amid issues a couple of cost-of-living crisis that propelled Mamdani’s marketing campaign, which centered on the intertwined problems with affordability and transit.
New York is racing towards “a local weather system that’s altering very quickly,” in response to Louise Yeung, town’s newly appointed chief local weather officer. “And in order we’re speeding to make these enhancements, we additionally should be…catching up with the pace at which the local weather is altering.”
These adaptation challenges aren’t restricted to New York, in response to Lykke Leonardsen, program director of Resilient & Sustainable Metropolis Options in Copenhagen, Denmark, who has collaborated with metropolis officers primarily on the Cloudburst Program, designed to mitigate the consequences of sudden, heavy downpours. Public transit operators globally are grappling with extreme local weather impacts. These operators oversee newer transit techniques, just like the Copenhagen Metro, and legacy techniques, just like the London Tube and the Paris Métro, to which the MTA has appeared for inspiration. “There [are] conversations occurring worldwide as we take into consideration vulnerabilities for city metro techniques,” stated Eric Wilson, the MTA’s senior vice chairman of local weather and land use technique. “It’s our objective to offer continuity of service and dependable service even throughout excessive climate occasions, so individuals can get to the place they should be.”
Not like drivers of passenger vehicles, which contribute considerably to the 29 % of greenhouse gasoline emissions generated by the transportation sector in america, New York regional transit riders “keep away from not less than 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gasoline emissions from being pumped into the ambiance”—the equal to the quantity of carbon absorbed by a forest the scale of Indiana. “Transit,” in response to Kara Gurl, the planning and advocacy supervisor of the Permanent Citizens’ Advisory Council, “is the antidote to local weather change.”
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In 2012, the devastation of Superstorm Sandy elevated local weather consciousness amongst New Yorkers, reminding town that it was removed from resistant to the disaster and catalyzing the MTA to put in coastal surge protections throughout 31 weak subway stations. Nonetheless, riders in current months have struggled to get to and from work, dwelling, college, and extra amid subway flooding, which may lure and strand riders. In additional excessive circumstances, reminiscent of China in 2021, subway flooding can cause accidents and even deaths.
Within the first three-quarters of 2025 alone, the New York Metropolis subway system had greater than a billion riders, making any service disruption a giant deal. When public transit was shut down for lower than a day throughout a snowstorm in 2015, for instance, town lost an estimated $200 million in financial exercise. But the prices of local weather adaptation are additionally steep. The preliminary estimate of capital prices for local weather resilience work outlined within the MTA’s Local weather Resilience Roadmap total greater than $6 billion over a decade.
The highway map, launched in April 2024, consists of 10 targets, together with shielding subway stations and tunnels from storm water and increasing underground air circulation and cooling. Because the unpredictability of torrential rainfall occasions makes “short-term options like deployable flood doorways and vent mechanical closure units” much less efficient, the highway map referred to as for “structural redesigns.”
Final yr, the MTA reported that its newest capital plan helps $1.5 billion of local weather resilience investments, with a devoted allocation of $700 million particularly for storm water flood mitigation efforts. These investments embrace upgrading previous pump rooms that assist transport storm water out of the subway into the Metropolis’s sewer system. (As of 2023, 11 % of those pump rooms were in marginal or poor situation.) Extra fast actions embrace including elevated steps at street-level subway station entrances to forestall rainwater from spilling straight into the subway, as can already be seen on the twenty eighth Avenue station in Chelsea. The MTA has additionally sealed manholes which have brought on miniature geysers in earlier heavy rains, and has elevated some drains and enhanced drainage extra broadly.
The MTA recognized 10 precedence areas spanning all 5 boroughs—together with Longwood Avenue within the Bronx and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn—as vulnerable to storm flooding dangers and urged town to fortify protections in these areas. “Inequity is all the time an element on this dialog,” stated Tiffany-Ann Taylor, the vice chairman for transportation on the Regional Plan Affiliation. Making its selections clear to the general public may also help guarantee accountability for the MTA in doing local weather resilience work equitably, she stated. The MTA’s Capital Dashboard, a publicly out there undertaking course of tracker, gives a useful baseline.
Below the Mamdani administration, many really feel optimistic about the way forward for metropolis transit. Whereas the mayor’s marketing campaign centered on making buses free and engaged much less with climate policy, Gurl sees his concern for transit and identification as a rider as signifying a broader dedication.
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Amid expansive federal environmental regulatory rollbacks and withdrawal from worldwide local weather motion, this dedication comes at an important second.
The Trump administration has continued to attack congestion pricing, which has supplied crucial revenue for transit enchancment tasks. But, in an important win for New York, a federal courtroom not too long ago dominated that the administration had illegally canceled hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ value of federal grants for clear vitality and transportation tasks in Democratic states, together with funding allotted for expanding the Second Avenue subway.
A hostile and anti–climate science presidential administration represents a major problem, in response to Taylor. Even with enough capital funding, she defined, the funding out there to function and keep new local weather infrastructural upgrades stays restricted. (The MTA’s operational budget, which helps the day-to-day prices of working the subway and makes use of income from transit fares, is distinct from its capital finances, which helps broader work.)
“This isn’t a problem that we’re going to resolve in a single day, and we’re going to want funding coming in for the subsequent few a long time,” stated Gurl. For now, she added, “there’s all the time going to be a viral video of a brand new station underwater, and it’s tough to get forward of that,” particularly when subway adaptation can entail short-term tradeoffs, reminiscent of development impeding service and inconveniencing riders. Leonardsen additionally emphasised how the subway’s extensiveness, vital ridership, age, and design pose distinct challenges in comparison with adapting smaller and newer techniques like Copenhagen’s Metro.
Each Wilson and Gurl highlighted the significance of continued shut collaboration between state and metropolis companies. How town manages its sewage system and streets, for instance, can affect the MTA’s capability to fortify stations towards flooding. Wilson additionally stated that although warmth mitigation continues to show difficult, the MTA is exploring improvements in warmth restoration applied sciences, reminiscent of geothermal cooling technologies. He’s additionally heartened that the MTA works carefully with the New York City Panel on Climate Change, an impartial advisory physique that synthesizes local weather science to tell Metropolis coverage and incorporates projections about native local weather impacts into its strategy to transit resilience.
Yeung described town’s ongoing efforts to bolster the local weather resilience of its streets and public infrastructure, together with “doing the essential work of restore that’s usually very unsexy, however very essential to ensure that our infrastructure works correctly” (like sustaining sewers, siphons, catch basins, and water mains), in coordination with the MTA’s efforts. When requested about any impacts of a hostile federal authorities, she added, “We don’t actually need exterior companions of the federal authorities to make New Yorkers’ lives higher and safer and more healthy. And so we’re actually leaning into all of these options that we are able to do proper right here within the 5 boroughs.”
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