Metro-North to be at half capacity Monday, fully restored by Oct. 8: MTA

The MTA said the Metro-North Railroad expects its New Haven line to return to half capacity today after a power failure last week caused delays for tens of thousands of commuters, and two senators have called for a probe into how the power failure happened.

Metro-North President Howard Permut said full service will likely be restored by Oct. 8, after ConEd has completed its repairs and the MTA has run its tests.

"This service plan will remain in effect until Con Edison is able to provide full power through the Mount Vernon feeder to the New Haven Line," Permut said. "Until then, we thank our customers for their patience and flexibility during this disruption."

The outage began on Wednesday morning when a high-powered electric cable failed near Harrison, New York, a town about 22 miles north of Manhattan. The outage occurred while crews were working to replace an alternate power line.

Some 125,000 commuters a day have faced long delays as crews struggle to restore full service.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal have written to the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York State Public Service Commission asking that they help restore power and examine what went wrong.

"The Department of Energy needs to join up with the investigators at the Public Service Commission and utilize their expertise to figure out what exactly went wrong and why, and how it can be fixed," Schumer said.