Six people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a crowded New York commuter train struck a car stalled on the tracks near a suburban area during rush hour, in what officials said was the railroad’s deadliest accident.
The train, with about 650 passengers on board, hit the Jeep Cherokee near Valhalla - about 32km from New York - on Tuesday evening, BBC reported.
The vehicle’s female driver was killed, along with five people on the train, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. The car and front carriage of the train caught fire following the crash. It was previously reported six train passengers had died but Cuomo and New York officials said that number had been revised down. Seven people were reported seriously injured. Hundreds of passengers were taken to a rock-climbing gym for shelter, authorities said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the state-controlled agency that runs the railroad, said the crash was the deadliest accident for Metro-North, the second largest commuter railroad in the US.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that investigates transportation accidents, plans to examine signals at the crossing, the highway that intersects the rail tracks and any issues linked with the fire. The crash also meant that thousands of commuters faced a snarled journey to work on Wednesday morning. MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said roughly 45,000 riders take the Metro-North Railroad’s Harlem Line on an average weekday, about 14,000 of whom board north of where the crash occurred and would be directly affected.
Parts of the line remained close on Wednesday, according to the MTA, which was arranging for shuttle buses to fill the gap and warned of crowding and delays, although some trains traveling on the stretch of the line south of the crash in the morning were not noticeably busier.
