Flooding near Court Sq–23 St in Long Island City forced the E onto a Roosevelt Island reroute Saturday, while the 7 bypassed the same hub for platform debris and the N ran split-section with 19-minute gaps — sending Queens riders to the streets and into gridlock.

Water on the tracks near Court Sq–23 St in Long Island City sent the E off its normal Queens route Saturday afternoon, according to the MTA's live service-alert feed. NYC Transit crews are working to remove the water; until they do, E trains are traveling via Roosevelt Island — the path the F and M normally use — between Manhattan and Queens rather than through the Queens–Midtown Tunnel corridor.

Simultaneously, the 7 train is bypassing Court Sq in both directions while crews clear debris from the platform. The two disruptions landed on the same hub: Court Sq is the Long Island City junction where the E, M, G, and 7 all connect. On a Saturday, when the W train is not scheduled at all, that left the Astoria–Queens Blvd corridor short three of its four trunk lines operating normally.

The N compounded things separately. Northbound trains are running in two disconnected sections today — one full-length from Coney Island–Stillwell Av to Astoria–Ditmars Blvd, a second short-turn from 9 St to Ditmars via R-line routing — a split the MTA's real-time feed flags as a planned service change. Southbound, headways between 36 St and 86 St are running up to 19 minutes, against a scheduled 12-minute interval.

The E was also contending with a second problem: a switch failure at Canal St has been generating A and E delays in both directions throughout the afternoon.

With subway access into Queens degraded across multiple lines, riders who turned to cars and rideshares found Queens streets severely gridlocked. One Uber passenger traveling from Astoria to Carroll Gardens reported barely clearing Queens after more than an hour in traffic — a trip the N would cover in roughly 45 minutes under normal conditions.

The MTA had not issued a restoration timeline for the E's Court Sq reroute as of Saturday evening.