By Sonja Sharp and Wil Cruz
DOWNTOWN — Thousands of commuters had a nightmare journey Friday morning when the World Trade Center PATH station was flooded by redirected straphangers trying to get to work, officials said.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey shut down the 9th Street Path station just before 7 a.m. — creating a bottleneck at the WTC and delaying thousands of frustrated passengers.
Escalators at the World Trade Center then had to be shutdown because of overcrowding, a Port Authority official said.
It became so bad that trains had to stop in tunnels, waiting for space to unload passengers, commuters said.
Faird Muhammad, 35, who lives in New Jersey and works on Broad Street, said, "The train stopped four or five times. The second time they said it was because of overcrowding.
"I never heard of that. We were sitting for over 20 minutes."
"The hilarious moment when the escalator at WTC path station stops working during morning rush hour..." tweeted @ploytang with a picture of crowds of people waiting to use the escalators.
Ron Marisco, an authority spokesman, said a man jumped on the 9th Street tracks early Friday morning, forcing officials to lock down the station and suspend the Journal Square/33rd St. line. It was closed for 30 minutes until the unidentified man was found, he said.
"We had to sweep the tracks," Marisco said. "So everybody had to go to the World Trade Center station."
The man was issued a summons for trespassing, he said.
PAPD cops tried to manage the chaos at the World Trade Center. But commuters tweeted that the delays and overcrowding left them fed up.
"Escalators are down in #WTC #path station," tweeted @stevenshie. "Literally thousands of ppl waiting to climb the tiny staircase. Gonna be a long wait."
Service was back to normal by about 10:30 a.m.
