Why Are The NYC Subways Delayed? How To Get Home During Rush Hour Commute

If you work in New York City, you might want to skip taking the train home Wednesday. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, tweeted from its verified subway account at about 1:30 p.m. EDT that all train lines were experiencing delays due to a power issue.

An MTA spokeswoman told DNAinfo that no individual trains lost their power during the outage, which began at 1:20 p.m. EDT. Gothamist reported that the MTA didn't yet know when the train schedules would get back on track.

To get home Wednesday, you can call a cab through a service like YellowCabNYC or use an app like Uber, which recently announced plans to sell passes that let commuters have unlimited uberPOOL carpool rides during certain hours. Prices for the passes range from $49 to $159 depending on the period you're looking for, according to amNY.

Or you can walk. Temperatures were supposed to be in the upper-70s and mid-80s all afternoon, though isolated thunderstorms were forecast for 5 p.m. EDT.

More than 7 million people ride New York City's trains and buses every day, according to the MTA website. Its subway system is the seventh largest in the world, after train networks in cities like Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai. There are 21 subway routes, three shuttle services and more than 6,400 individual train cars.

Delays may be frustrating, but they're not out of the ordinary. In 2014, there were about 43,339 delays on weekdays per month, the New York Post reported. The worst offenders are usually the 5 and A trains, though many residents have developed personal vendettas against other lines.

“The 6 train is reliable in only one way — its unreliability,” Eliezer DeCosta told the Post last year. “Seriously, I’d put money down every time I get on the 6 that I’m going to be late to wherever I’m going.”