14th Street-Union Square (New York Subway)

The first express station uptown from Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall is 14th Street-Union Square. This station has the uptown and downtown platforms offset from each other, and are slightly curved. Gap filling moveable platforms are automatically operated via proximity sensors mounted on the outside wall when trains arrive. This station has two abandoned side local platforms, the nouthbound one is now visible again through windows, bordered with wide, bright red frames. It looks like this platform is being used as a utility chase. From the north end of the downtown platform's mezzanine one can see the abandoned southbound side platform thorugh a hole in the plywood. This station's mezzanines are located over the platforms. This station provides a number of transfer opportunities:

• Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation's Canarsie-14th Street Line
• Brooklyn-Manhattan Rapid Transit's Broadway Subway

On August 29, 1991, an accident occurred just north of the station, killing five people in one of the worst wrecks since the Malbone Street Disaster of 1918. The train operator, Robert Ray, had been overshooting platforms on the entire run. At 14th Street-Union Square the train was to be shifted to the local track due to repairs. He had been running the train at 40 MPH (65 Km/h) in a 10 MPH (16 Km/h) zone and took the switch so fast that only the front of the first car made the crossover. The third and fourth cars ended up perpendicular to the tracks, having sheared off support columns and split in half. The line suffered heavy damage and service was disrupted for six days as transit workers toiled around the clock to clean up the wreckage. The entire infrastructure, including signals, the switches, track, roadbed, cabling, and 23 support columns needed to be replaced. The motorman was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The wreck occurred between 18th Street Station and 14th Street-Union Square on the downtown side at the entry to a former pocket track. 14th Street-Union Square and 72nd Street on the Interborough Rapid Transit West Side line had extra tracks on the approach to the station. These were between the incoming local and express track and were one old Interborough Rapid Transit train length long. The idea was to have a 'stacking' track where a train could be held momentarily until the platform cleared for it to enter the station. The track here and at 72nd Street were rendered useless when train lengths grew beyond their capacity. When the damage from the 1991 wreck was repaired, the crossing was not made more gentle even though the stacking track was removed.