Opinion: Do we need the use of "embarrassing" to describe a this?
Here's the article from the NY Post:
LIRR train hits concrete walkway in ‘embarrassing’ mishap during morning commute By Nolan Hicks April 4, 2023 6:35pm
Scores of Long Island Rail Road riders had their commute thrown into chaos Tuesday when a train struck a concrete walkway along the tracks.
MTA officials described the collision as minor and said none of the 386 passengers or crew members aboard the train — the 6:24 a.m. bound from Hempstead, LI, to Penn Station in Manhattan — were injured.
But the incident forced the closure of one of the four heavily used railroad tracks running between Queens and Manhattan for roughly four hours as Amtrak, which owns the tunnel, conducted an emergency inspection.
The shutdown caused delays to ripple across the system and led to a dozen trains either cancelled or diverted from Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
It also gave LIRR commuters and staff — already frustrated with the railroad’s controversial schedule shakeup — another reason to fume.
“This is straight-up embarrassing,” an employee radioed to another worker in a conversation overheard by a Post reporter, who was aboard one of the delayed trains from Ronkonkoma.
The LIRR said the collision occurred shortly before 7:30 a.m. and that the train kept on toward its destination and arrived on time. It was not immediately clear why the collision occurred.
The MTA had initially told LIRR riders that they could “expect possible delays, cancelations and diversions this morning as Amtrak personnel inspect the rail in one of the East River tunnels” in a service bulletin posted on its mobile TrainTime app.
Amtrak revealed the emergency track inspection was caused by an LIRR train striking the concrete walkway that runs along the tunnel’s side, in response to an inquiry from The Post about the cause of the emergency track work.
The MTA credited its recently opened $11 billion Grand Central Madison train hall with helping to limit the fallout from losing a track to Penn Station during the rush hour.
“Thankfully, given the existence of a second Manhattan terminal and set of tunnels at Grand Central Madison, the disruption to service was less impactful to riders than it might have been before,” said spokesman Aaron Donovan.
Dozens of LIRR trains were either canceled or diverted because of Tuesday’s snafu.
J. Messerschmidt/NY Post