![]() “Our barriers are impervious and designed to handle flooding as much as 16 feet deep,” Dan Klopp, a product managing marketer at ILC Dover, tells Atlas Obscura’s Isaac Schultz. As Justine Calma reports for the Verge, the MTA has already installed 65 flex gates around the city the transit authority plans on installing an additional three gates in the near future. The gate-developed by engineering company ILC Dover-is made of woven Kevlar and is designed to be deployed by a single person within minutes. The flex gate is one of several tools used to protect low-lying subway stations from a storm surge, or an abnormal rise in seawater triggered by strong storm winds that push ocean water ashore. We're doing this because climate change is real. We "test flood" the entrance for four hours to make sure it was installed correctly, which it was! “We've learned our lesson-won't happen again,” MTA Chairman Joe Lhota told NY1’s Jose Martinez in 2017.īut actually, we were testing a new "flex gate," which is a flood barrier that would allow us to seal off a subway entrance. At the time, subway staff only had sandbags and plywood to protect stations from incoming water. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded a dozen New York City subway tunnels and nine train stations, inflicting billions of dollars of damage on the city’s transit system. The account added, “We're doing this because climate change is real.” We ‘test flood’ the entrance for four hours to make sure it was installed correctly, which it was.” The page offered up a joke-“We’re pivoting to submarines”-before revealing the actual explanation: “We were testing a new ‘flex gate,’ which is a flood barrier that would allow us to seal off a subway entrance. The Metropolitan Transit Authority Twitter account replied about 90 minutes later. “Only once I was on the train did I start thinking, wait, that really was quite insane.”Īfter accessing the platform through a drier station entrance, Blegvad posted the image on Twitter alongside the caption “MTA explain yourself.” “The other subway entrances were dry and normal and nobody seemed to be freaking out, so I just got on the train,” Blegvad tells Quartz ’s Zoë Schlanger. ![]() Most passing New Yorkers shrugged the unusual scene off and kept walking, but illustrator Kaye Blegvad decided to stop and snap a photograph of the G train’s flooded Broadway Station entrance. The staircase was filled to the brim with water despite the fact that it hadn’t rained that day.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |