About 700 riders heading home from a Chris Brown and Usher concert got stuck in the dark for nearly two hours early Saturday after their New York City-bound train lost power and stalled inside the tunnel beneath the Hudson River. The train stopped around 1:45 a.m., and passengers were not freed until a rescue locomotive towed the disabled train into Manhattan and evacuated everyone through Moynihan Train Hall by around 3 a.m.
The scene, first detailed by the New York Post, described passengers sweating through stifling heat and humidity after the train lost electricity and air-conditioning. One unidentified woman told the paper the train's lights flickered before it went dark, and that she smelled smoke like rubber burning. A diabetic passenger was among those trapped, according to the Post's reporting. The FDNY received the call about the disabled train around 1:45 a.m. and responded with 21 units and 79 fire and EMS personnel, marking the incident under control by 3 a.m.
Ernesto Valverde, 37, told the Post that passengers were stuck for two hours in heat and humidity to cover a trip of less than a mile, and he criticized New Jersey Transit for what he called awful service and unpreparedness. He said the train broke down less than a mile from the Manhattan platform. Damara Lee, 49, described the ordeal to the Post simply as hell, saying the train lost power and became hot and sweaty before she finally made it home to Far Rockaway around 4 a.m.
Why the Track-Walk Plan Got Scrapped
According to Lee's account in the Post, NJ Transit personnel initially planned to walk passengers back along the tracks but abandoned that idea because it became too complicated. Separate reporting from FreedomNewsTV confirmed that emergency responders scrapped the on-foot evacuation because guiding roughly 700 crowded riders through a narrow, unventilated tunnel in pitch darkness was too dangerous. A diesel rescue locomotive instead towed the stalled train into Penn Station by around 3 a.m., FreedomNewsTV reported. NJ Transit did not return the Post's request for comment on the incident.
The train was carrying fans returning from the Chris Brown and Usher concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, and Lee said the show itself had been delayed by inclement weather. NJ Transit had scheduled dedicated event rail service on the Meadowlands Rail Line for both August 7 and August 8 specifically to manage crowd flow for the two-night run, per the agency's own travel alerts. Even with that added service, the Meadowlands Rail Spur, which opened in 2009 at a cost of $185 million, has a maximum capacity of only about 10,000 to 12,000 passengers per hour — a bottleneck when as many as 30,000 concertgoers try to leave MetLife Stadium at once, according to data cited by WE Transport.
A Century-Old Tunnel Still Carrying the Load
The tunnel where the train stalled is part of the North River Tunnel, a two-track crossing beneath the Hudson that opened in 1910 and still carries every Amtrak and NJ Transit train into Penn Station, according to the Gateway Program. With only two tracks serving the entire region, any single breakdown can halt traffic in both directions. The tunnel's vulnerabilities trace back to Superstorm Sandy in October 2012, when both tubes flooded with seawater; the Federal Railroad Administration has found that corrosive salt deposits left behind continue to degrade concrete and electrical systems inside the tunnel more than a decade later.
That damage compounds a separate, seasonal problem. NJ Transit has said that extreme summer heat causes overhead catenary wires to expand and sag, letting train pantographs snag on loose lines, snap power connections, and cut off onboard electricity and air conditioning — the same failure mode described by passengers on Saturday's train. The scale of the problem was laid bare in 2024, when NJ Transit logged 1,820 train cancellations between June and August, with 527 tied directly to Amtrak infrastructure failures and catenary wire collapses, per the NJ Monitor.
Billions Committed, but Relief Years Away
Amtrak and NJ Transit responded to that crisis by completing more than $12 million in joint upgrades in April 2025, replacing nearly 7,500 catenary wire hardware components along vulnerable stretches near Penn Station and Secaucus Junction, CBS New York reported at the time. But the permanent fix is still years out. The Gateway Development Commission is overseeing the $16 billion Hudson Tunnel Project to build two new tunnel tubes by 2035, after which the 1910-era North River Tunnel would be taken fully out of service for rehabilitation through 2038, according to a report from the Amtrak Office of Inspector General.
In the meantime, demand on the aging system is only growing. Transit planning tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup has revealed that general parking at MetLife Stadium will be heavily restricted going forward, pushing up to 40,000 attendees per event onto NJ Transit rail and bus lines instead, per reporting from 6sqft. For riders like Valverde and Lee, that means more crowds funneling into the same century-old tunnel that failed them early Saturday.
