Straphangers Are Again Left Hanging

The riders' reactions could be read from their faces. Confusion. Scorn. A grimace. Then a muttered curse.

What had straphangers struggling yesterday was the bursting of a primary water pipe in early afternoon after a weekend of high winds and rains. It drowned the track beds of the nos. 1, 2, 3, and 9 lines in pools of water. Fearing a devastating electrical fire, engineers shut off electricity and shut down train service between Canal and 34th streets for most of the day and into the evening.

Riders looking to race home to the Upper West Side or back into Brooklyn were re-routed by transit police. Shoppers lugging large bags filled with Sunday purchases expressed frustration. Dates were late.

"I hope she'll understand," an economic analyst, Stephen Murray, said, delayed in meeting a woman he was going out with.

Yesterday's interruption of service marked the latest in a recent string of incidents that have stranded or detoured straphangers following a massive and mysterious subway fire at the Chambers Street station in late January. That fire affected service for an estimated 580,000 riders on the A and C lines for a week and a half.

Last month, seepages of water onto the Lexington Avenue line caused three power outages during the morning and evening rush hours, causing delays for an estimated 350,000 commuters. A subway fire of unknown origin also filled the Atlantic Avenue station with smoke, injuring five people and causing delays. In another case, an improperly secured metal plate became dislodged, struck the third rail in the train bed, created smoke, and trapped 750 passengers in subway cars for more than an hour.

"I think the subway cars and the subway system are decaying into a state of oblivion," a music composer, Charles Waters, said yesterday. He was rerouted when he tried to take the 2 or 3 train to Lincoln Center, where his wife was scheduled to perform the Maurice Ravel's piano concerto for the left hand.

"You can't go anywhere on the train, especially on the weekend, without something getting shut down," Mr. Waters said. "Now it's the 1-9's turn."

The bursting of the water pipe was believed to have happened underneath a contemporary-furniture store at Chelsea, Jensen-Lewis, on Seventh Avenue between 15th and 16th streets, engineers from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who were working in the track at the 14th Street station, said at dinnertime yesterday.

While the specific cause of the break remained under investigation, the MTA engineers said workers from several agencies - the Department of Environmental Protection, the Office of Emergency Management, the Department of Transportation, and the MTA, as well as Con Edison - had shut off the electricity and were using giant hoses attached to generators to pump out all the water, which had eventually leaked into a circuit-breaker room and flooded the switches and wires. The hoses were set up across the train tracks, which were also flooded, and the water was pumped into alternative drains in the subway system, the engineers said.

The subway lines' own drains were apparently filled by runoff from the weekend's rainfall or were clogged, the engineers added.

The MTA engineers predicted that most of the subway service on the 1, 2, 3, and 9 lines would be restored by late last night, although other minor damage incurred during the flood would perhaps take a few days to fix.