NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Adams Has a Message for Cuomo, Service Disruptions Coming to the G Train, and Hot Car Complaints on the Subway

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Mayor Adams is calling on former Governor Andrew Cuomo not to run in the general election this November. Plus, service disruptions are coming to the G train. And finally, a search for the subway line with the most hot car complaints.

Service disruptions coming to the G train. Mayor Adams is calling on Andrew Cuomo to sit out the general election and a search for the subway line with the most hot car complaints. From WNIC, this is NYC now. I'm Sean Carlson. As he seeks re-election, Mayor Adams is calling on former governor Andrew Cuomo not to run in the general election this November. On CNBC Monday, Adams said Cuomo lost the Democratic primary for mayor, despite favorable polls and lost. of outside support. He was up 32 points. $30 million. You lost.

They heard your message and you lost. Now let a fresh set of legs that has produced for this city. And that's the highest level of arrogance. Both Adams and Cuomo will have ballot lines as independent candidates in November. Independent Jim Walden and Republican Curtis Sliwa are also running. Cuomo has not said if he will actively campaign. His campaign says it's figuring out its next steps after state assembly member Zoran Mamdani won the June primary.

Representatives for Cuomo say Mamdani would likely win in the general, as so many candidates remain in the race. Heads up to G-Train riders out there. Overnight and weekend service disruptions are starting next week. The MTA says there will be no service between Court Square and Bedford-Nosheran avenues on select weeknights and weekends, July 14th through August 18th. The overnight outages will be from 9.45 p.m. to 5 in the morning.

On weekends, they'll run from 9.45 p.m. Friday through early Monday morning. The service disruptions are to allow the MTA to modernize signals on the line, which date back to the 1930s. The agency says the old signals have been a major cause of disruptions and delays. Riding in a subway car with a busted air conditioner is a miserable experience. We've all been there. Coming up, we'll track down the line with the most hot car complaints. Stick around. A simple subway ride can turn into an express train to hell when a car's air conditioner breaks down in the summer.

Using data he obtained exclusively from the MTA, W-NIC's Ramsey-Kulife-A tries to track down the subway car with the most complaints for a busted AC. I'm standing on the subway platform at South Ferry in the middle of a sweltering heat wave, looking for one of the city's worst subway cars. It feels like a sauna. It actually feels like a heat blaster. Savvy subway riders know the one train is notorious for having broken air conditioners, making the line a miserable ride in the summer. But I wanted to find the numbers that prove that well-known truth. So I put in a freedom of information requests with the MTA, asking which train cars receive the most complaints for busted ACs,

and which cars are taken out of service most often. The data I got back confirmed the obvious. The one line does, in fact, get way more complaints for hot cars than any other subway route. I guess that's another feature of the one train. Such an old car, you can imagine that a lot of things break down often. The MTA relies on subway trains from the 1980s on the one train. There's some of the least reliable cars in the entire system. The data also shows which car on the line is the hottest.

Car number 2449, which received 62 complaints for a broken AC over the last five summers. The subway car is my white whale. I've been assigned to find it at all costs with a temperature gun in hand. It's an hour and a half in while I haven't found the hottest car yet. I did find the fourth hottest car. Right now, it's not too bad. It's working. But the temperatures aren't that cool.

Let's get a reading. My temperature gun recorded a seat on the car at 82 degrees. That's not too hot, but it's still steamier than the 72 degrees the MTA says is the standard for the interiors of subway cars. As I keep looking for the legendary hottest car, I find a different one that has no working AC at all. It's hovering between 92 Fahrenheit and 93 degrees Fahrenheit. It's about 100 outside.

Coming down and only losing about 7 degrees is not ideal for riders. Vincent Diplato was on the train with me. He says he's used to hot rides on the one line. Today there's no air conditioner on this car. But that's not unusual. I've been in the city for 74 years, and the train system hasn't worked as well as we would like it. Diplato is a regular one train rider,

and the broken A-Cs are just a symptom of deeper problems on the line. Because the one trains are four decades old, crews simply can't fix the cars as quickly as they break down. In this wicked heat, I dream of a chilly day in December, when I visited an MTA repair shop in the Bronx where crews fix all the trains on the one line. Willie Speck, the general superintendent, showed me around. He says the design of the air conditioning units on one train cars make the systems prone to breaking down. Well, it's a split system. So you have two evaporators.

upstairs, one condenser and one air compressor. So when anything goes down on the system, you will lose 100% of your HVAC or air conditioning in the car. So that's why we have so many hot cars. How often during the summers are you getting in cars with AC issues? We have a lot of issues, put it that way. It's older equipment.

It fails more often. The MTA plans to replace all the one train cars with modern trains in the coming decade. But in the meantime, riders like Amad Perry, have to commute in what feels like a steam room. I have not been on a car that had AC yet. In the last few days, I've traveled back and forth on the one line, the hottest day of the year.

102 degrees outside and we're sitting on a hot car. The MTA notes a very small fraction of riders actually get into a car without working AC every year. Back at South Ferry, I'm still looking for the hottest car. But after two days, I've struck out. The MTA won't say whether the car is even in search. service or back at 240th Street for repairs. I leave the station defeated, sweating, hobbled.

But like Captain Ahab looking for his own white whale, I won't rest until I find dreaded car 2449. That's W&MISES, Ramsey Caliphay. And finally, Geekwee kicks off at Sotheby's this week. That's when the upscale auction house hosts free public viewings for its science and natural history sales. On view is the skeleton of a rare dinosaur called a serratosaurus, one of only four known to exist, as well as a 54-pound chunk of the planet Mars that crashed into the Sahara Desert after an asteroid strike.

Sotheby's Science and Natural History Specialist Cassandra Hatton says that's just a taste of what's for sale, including an original Apple One computer hand-built by Steve Jobs in the 1970s. I do dinosaurs, minerals, meteorites, fossils, space exploration, and then to just kind of throw a little wrench in it, I do hip-hop sales sometimes too. Subabees Geek Week starts Tuesday. It runs through July 15th. The viewing is free to the public. Thanks for listening to NYC now from Download the NYC. I'm Sean Carlson. See you tomorrow.