Speaking at a press conference at 11:02 a.m. on the morning of the attacks, Mayor
Rudy Giuliani told New Yorkers: "If you are south of Canal Street, get out. Walk slowly and carefully. If you can't figure what else to do, just walk north." The neighborhood was covered in dust and debris, and electrical failures caused traffic light outages. Emergency vehicles were given priority to respond to ongoing fires, building collapses, and expected mass casualties. Over a million workers and residents south of Canal Street were evacuated, and police stopped pedestrians from entering Lower Manhattan. With subways shut down, vehicle traffic restricted, and tunnels closed, they mainly fled on foot, pouring over bridges and ferries to Brooklyn and New Jersey. Many Manhattan office workers returned to their jobs for the first time on Monday, September 24. With security restrictions creating hours-long delays, drivers entering the city experienced severe traffic jams. Officials urged commuters to take mass transit instead of driving, and a spokesman for the
New York City Department of Transportation said that September 25 "might have been the worst traffic day since
Henry Ford invented the car." The remaining restrictions were removed on November 17, 2003.
Mass transit New York City Subway IRT station, which was directly below the World Trade Center, after the September 11 attacks The tracks and stations under the
World Trade Center were shut down within minutes of the first plane crash. All remaining
New York City Subway service was suspended from 10:20 a.m. to 12:48 p.m. Service on the
BMT Broadway Line was also disrupted because the tracks from the
Montague Street Tunnel run adjacent to the World Trade Center and there were concerns that train movements could cause unsafe settling of the debris pile.
Cortlandt Street station, which sits under
Church Street, sustained significant damage in the collapse of the towers. It was closed until September 15, 2002 for removal of debris, structural repairs, and restoration of the track beds, which had suffered flood damage in the aftermath of the collapse. Starting September 17, 2001, and service was suspended and respectively replaced by the (which was extended to
Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue via the
BMT Montague Street Tunnel,
BMT Fourth Avenue Line, and
BMT Sea Beach Line) and the (also extended via Fourth Avenue to
Bay Ridge–95th Street). In Queens, the replaced the while the replaced the . All service on the BMT Broadway Line ran local north of
Canal Street except for the <Q>, which ran normally from
57th Street to
Brighton Beach via Broadway and Brighton Express. J/Z skip-stop service was suspended at this time. Normal service on all seven trains resumed on October 28. The
IND Eighth Avenue Line, which has a stub terminal serving the train under
Five World Trade Center, was undamaged, but covered in soot. E trains were extended to
Euclid Avenue, Brooklyn, replacing the then suspended train (the and trains replaced it as the local north of
59th Street–Columbus Circle on nights and weekends, respectively. The train, which ran normally from
145th Street or
Bedford Park Boulevard to
34th Street–Herald Square via Central Park West Local, also replaced C trains on weekdays). Service was cut back to
Canal Street when C service resumed on September 21, but
Chambers Street and
Broadway–Nassau Street remained closed until October 1.
World Trade Center remained closed until January 2002. The only subway line running between Midtown and Lower Manhattan nearby the former World Trade Center Complex was the
IRT Lexington Avenue Line, which was overcrowded before the attacks and at crush density until the BMT Broadway Line reopened.
Wall Street was closed until September 21. The IND 6th Avenue line and BMT Nassau Street line were the only two routes in lower Manhattan to be completely unaffected by the 9/11 attacks due to them not being near the complex itself There were no reported casualties on the subway or loss of train cars, but a
Motor Coach Industries coach bus was destroyed. Another bus was damaged, but was repaired and returned to normal service with a special commemoration livery.
PATH PATH started evacuating passengers from its Manhattan trains and tracks within minutes of the first plane crash. The
PATH station at World Trade Center was heavily damaged (a train parked in the station was crushed by debris and was removed during the excavation process in January 2002) and all service was suspended. For several hours, PATH did not run any trains to Manhattan, but was able to restore service on the
Uptown Hudson Tubes to
33rd Street by the afternoon.
Exchange Place was unusable since the switch configuration at the time required all trains to continue to World Trade Center. As a result, PATH ran a modified service: Hoboken-Journal Square, Hoboken-33rd Street, and Newark-33rd Street. Exchange Place reopened with modifications on June 29, 2003; a temporary station replacing World Trade Center opened on November 23.
Ferries Liberty Water Taxi and
NY Waterway had a ferry terminal at the
World Financial Center. As the area around the terminal was in the restricted zone, NY Waterway suspended service to the terminal with alternate service going to
Midtown and
Wall Street and Liberty Water Taxi service was suspended. Free ad-hoc ferry service to New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Queens began by evening, with about
half a million evacuees transported by Circle Line Tours, NY Waterway, privately owned dining boats, tug boats, and at least one fire boat.
Buses Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses were temporarily suspended south of Canal Street, and MTA and NJ Transit buses were re-routed to serve passengers arriving in Brooklyn and New Jersey by walking and taking ferries out of Manhattan.
Intercity transit The
Port Authority Bus Terminal was closed until September 13.
Amtrak suspended all of its rail service nationwide until 6pm, but by September 13 it had increased its capacity by 30% to deal with an influx of stranded flight passengers.
Greyhound Bus Lines cancelled its bus service in the Northeast, but was running normally by September 13. ==North American airspace==