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Power outage strands beachgoers over the weekend in Queens

A power outage in Queens stranded beachgoers over the weekend for two hours, officials said.

Several hundred people were stranded Saturday at the Broad Channel subway station when a ConEd feeder went down Saturday, making it difficult for beachgoers to reach the Rockaways. The A train was suspended in both directions from Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue to Broad Channel, as well as Rockaway Park-Beach 116th Street to Broad Channel.

Service was restored on both the A line and shuttle about 1:40 p.m., according to the MTA.
It provided shuttle buses during the outage.

Leia Jospe, a 23-year-old woman from Brooklyn, was heading to the beach when the train operator said at Broad Channel there was a power outage.

There were hundreds of people waiting for the bus, so she walked a half hour over the bridge.

“It only took us about 30 minutes to get from the train to the beach, and it made for a good reason to run into the water as soon as we got there,” she said.

A spokesman for Assemblyman Phillip Goldfeder’s office said there were long lines at bus stations, and some riders hitched rides to go over the bridge.

“As we’ve recently seen our train service in Rockaway is barely prepared to handle normal serivce, let alone emergency situations,” said Goldfeder, who called for a return in ferry service and new rail lines.

“The MTA needs to ensure that train service is reliable and prepared for power disruptions like we saw over the weekend,” he added.