Four people died and 67 or more were injured when a train derailed in the Bronx on Sunday. The train was headed for Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, and was approaching its destination when it came around a curve and fell on its side. An investigation is taking place as authorities try to determine the precise cause of the accident.
“That is a dangerous area on the track just by design,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said after Sunday’s crash. “The trains are going about 70 miles an hour coming down the straight part of the track. They slow to about 30 miles per hour to make that sharp curve … where the Hudson River meets the Harlem River, and that is a difficult area of the track.”
The Metropolitan Transit Authority pointed out that a freight train derailed in the same spot on the tracks back in July. “The curve has been here for many, many years, right, and trains take the curve every day, 365 days a year,” Cuomo said. “We’ve always had this configuration. We didn’t have accidents. So there has to be another factor, and that’s what we want to learn from the NTSB.”
The train operator also told an investigator that when he applied the brakes on the train, it did not slow down, signaling that it may have been moving too fast to begin with.
