Former MTA head remembers transit agency response on 9/11

There were two morning rush hours on Sept. 11, 2001 — the one that brought commuters into Manhattan, and the one shortly after that saw millions of New Yorkers trying to get out as fast as they could.

At the helm of the New York transit system while the city was under attack was Peter Kalikow, a real estate developer, who six months earlier became the eighth chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He learned of the attacks on the way to a routine MTA meeting, gathered transit leaders in a room and "gave them 10 minutes" to come up with a plan.

"My goal was to get everybody and lock down all the equipment and get everybody out of lower Manhattan as fast as possible with as little injury as possible," Kalikow, now 84, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

The collapse of the Twin Towers destroyed the World Trade Center Cortlandt Street station on the 1 subway line and surrounding infrastructure. Consulting with fellow MTA leaders, but without talking to then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Kalikow said he made the call to shut down Manhattan’s subway system, as well as Long Island Rail Road service west of Jamaica station.

On the last train out of Penn Station before the temporary suspension was current LIRR Commuter Council chairman Gerard Bringmann, who was working in his midtown construction office job and rushed to get home to Patchogue after learning of the attacks.

"On the train ride from Penn to Jamaica, you could see the towers, and they were still burning," said Bringmann, who had joined the LIRR rider watchdog group just months earlier. "I remember waiting in Jamaica and hearing somebody say the tower fell. ... People on the train were very shaken."

With Manhattan shut down, the LIRR’s operation at Jamaica became especially critical, Kalikow remembered. Throwing out any semblance of schedules or fares, trains loaded up and moved out as quickly as they could throughout the day, making every stop on their respective branches.

"Every train on the Long Island Rail Road was a local, and the service only went eastbound. ... When there was a train at the station, you got on it. If it was your line, it would stop at your train station," said Kalikow, a former publisher of the New York Post. "And that’s how we got everybody home."

From what he saw, people calmly followed instructions while MTA workers helped direct people.

"Have you watched the Godzilla movies where the people start screaming and yelling? I saw none of that. Everybody followed instructions," he said. MTA workers were "wearing a big thing that said that they were traffic control, passenger control. And everybody just spoke to them and I didn't see any panic at all."

By the next day, LIRR service to Manhattan was restored, along with some subway service outside of lower Manhattan. But Kalikow said the critical role the MTA played in getting New York through the terrorist attacks was far from over, as the authority transported workers and equipment to rescue, recovery and rebuilding efforts at Ground Zero.

"Everybody wanted to go down and work on the pile. And I said, ‘If you go down to the pile, who’s going to keep the trains running?’ ” said Kalikow, who recalled visiting stations throughout the city to provide employees "guidance" and encouragement.

The Manhattan resident said he’s proud of how he led the MTA in its mission, and of how equipped the agency was to come through the ordeal. He has never returned to the former World Trade Center site, where he lost several friends and colleagues, including Port Authority Executive Director Neil Levin. "It bothers me too much," he said.

Bringmann noted that among those lost in the attacks were hundreds of his fellow LIRR commuters — their disappearance from the daily grind of riding the train captured in the cars that remained for days at station parking lots throughout the Island.

"You knew those people weren’t coming home," Bringmann said.