MTA looks for $4 billion in substation overhauls to repair, upgrade power infrastructure

On a sweltering July day this past summer, straphangers trying to get home on the J train were left to sweat it out on the platform.

A 60-year-old power transformer in the subway system’s Delancey-Suffolk Substation — which MTA officials said had been operating for twice as many years as it should have — finally gave up the ghost, killing power to sections of the third rail throughout lower Manhattan. Trains, unable to move, were out of service from 6 p.m. July 16 until just before 4:30 a.m. following day, when replacement transformers were brought online.

“This is because the infrastructure is so damn old,” MTA chairman Janno Lieber told reporters later the morning of July 17. “[The transformer] is a major piece of equipment that [was] 30 years past its useful life.”

“It’s not sexy,” he said of the massive block of oil-bathed copper coils tasked with powering the third rail and, with it, the 16 electric motors that move a given eight-car J train. “It’s not a shiny new car, it’s not a brand new station, it’s not a new line — but we all depend on it every time we go into the subway.”

According to the MTA’s $68 billion 2025-2029 capital budget — currently under review by the state — the agency is hoping to spend $4 billion over the next five years to repair and upgrade its power infrastructure.

The bulk of that, nearly $3 billion, is earmarked for the subway system’s traction power network — the collection of substations and transmission lines scattered throughout the five boroughs to take tens of thousands of volts of alternating-current power from Con Ed and turn it into the 650 volts of direct current power the trains need to run.

MTA officials say that’s no small task, given the age and complexity of a system originally built to serve the separate individual lines that ultimately became the New York City subway system.

“[Of the] 224 substations [in the subway system,] we’ve identified 77 of them as having a majority of components in poor or marginal condition,” MTA’s head of construction and development, Jamie Torres-Springer, told the Daily News during a recent visit to some of the system’s power stations. “They’re in a state of disrepair.”

The subway substations have one job: to change the power generated by Con Ed into something usable by subway trains. Electricity generated at power plants has what’s called an alternating current — its direction swaps 60 times per second. This AC power can travel long distances along a wire without losing much voltage — but it’s useless for subway cars designed to run on DC, or direct current, power.

Transformers — massive coils of copper, bathed in oil to discourage electrical arcing and cooled by either air or water — bring the tens of thousands of volts down to hundreds. The current then goes to a device called the “rectifier,” which straightens AC into DC.

Forty feet below East New York at the Atlantic Substation, Joe Daidone, 46-year-old chief superintendent of NYC Transit’s power department, spoke to The News over the buzz of high voltage electrical current.

“This is from the late 30s or early 40s,” he said, pointing to the large gray transformer that dominated the underground room. “It’s original to the substation.”

One of several pipes feeding from a nearby water tank into the water-cooled transformer was made of shiny brass — a recent replacement for a corroded coolant line, Diadone said.

“That’s not a problem, we can shut down the station and change the pipe,” he said. “The problem is, if this is deteriorating, what’s going on inside?”

“Most likely, everything is corroded inside,” he said of the 80-year-old transformer. “We’re just buying time.”

Substations are set up throughout the system so that if one fails, others nearby can take over. Doing so, however, increases the strain on the adjacent substations, however, wearing out their components at a faster rate.

The Atlantic Substation, which powers a section of the Fulton Line of the A and C trains, was already decommissioned once, in 2000, when its rectifier — a depression-era mercury-arc system — was deemed too old to continue safely functioning.

Five years later, however, Diadone’s team found a way to press the Atlantic Substation back into service.

“That rectifier was borrowed from the garbage pails of the Long Island Rail Road,” Diadone said, pointing to a massive red and silver collection of diodes, fuses and heat-sinks behind the transformer. “Fifteen years ago, I put that into service.”

The rectifier — state of the art in the 1960s and long since discarded by NYC Transit’s sister railroad — is the Atlantic Substation’s most modern component.

MTA’s sought-after $4 billion investment in power — $3 billion for the subway, $1 billion for the commuter railroads — won’t be enough to modernize the whole system. The MTA capital plan estimates the money will allow for work on 60 of the 224 substations, with only “some” undergoing a full overhaul.

Across the river in Manhattan, the Central Substation on 53rd St. offers a glimpse of what that could look like.

Cavernous and brightly lit, the above-ground facility is home to three separate transformers powering the nearby A, C, E, D, and F trains.

Two of the three are modern, air-cooled units, with computerized controls and a back-catalog of replacement parts on offer from their manufacturers. A sleek row of computerized circuit breakers includes cabinets with replacement units, ready to swap in at a moment’s notice.

Officials say the “cleaner” power — more consistent rectification and a more constant DC voltage — that such systems can produce will be even more important when the MTA starts converting more lines to Communication Based Train Control.

CBTC, a computerized signaling system, will allow the MTA to run trains closer together — increasing the number of trains and thus the amount of power required on a given section of track.

It remains to be seen if the MTA will be able to fully fund its proposed capital program. Accounting for expected state and city contributions, the MTA is still seeking to close a $33 billion funding hole. Asked about the proposed budget shortly after its approval by the MTA board in September, Gov. Hochul said the $68 billion figure wasn’t “final,” and could still be rolled back.

But Lieber has repeatedly emphasized the importance of “state of good repair” work in the coming years.

MTA officials said they expect the Atlantic Substation — which serves a portion of the line the MTA hopes to convert to modern signals — will be one of the substations prioritized for a full overhaul in the budget: a new transformer, a new rectifier, and maybe even new circuit breakers.

Back at the Atlantic Substation that had Diadone eyeing its row of antique mechanical breakers as desirable spare parts, he lamented “there’s only three substations I know that have this breaker,” pointing to a particularly intricate-looking device on the far end of the wall.

“When we rehab this place, that is coming with me,” he continued. “I’ll save [another] substation and get it back online because if it.”