Teresa Footman, a rookie NYC Transit conductor whose cool demeanor went viral for keeping her passengers calm while stuck on an F train for two-and-a-half hours, was recognized by transit brass Monday for “a job well done.”
“Conductor Footman had only been on the job 15 months, but she did an amazing job (during) the entire incident,” NYC Transit head Demetrius Crichlow said Monday at a meeting of the MTA’s board.
Footman, who was in command of one of the two F trains stuck below Brooklyn after last week’s explosion at the State Street substation, was lauded for her calm by multiple passengers on social media.
“Our conductor was great – informative, professional, sympathetic, and with good humor,” Alex Munoz wrote on X shortly after the incident. “Give her a raise, have her train others. You’ve got a talented employee that deserves recognition.”
Passengers reported that Footman kept her passengers informed about what was wrong, and regularly walked the train, checking in on straphangers during the two-and-a-half hours before the subway was evacuated.
“Not just one customer recognized her work — several customers spoke to the caliber of her commitment, her authenticity, and her going above and beyond,” Crichlow said Monday.
“You never hear that in the middle of an evacuation,” he added.
Speaking to reporters, Footman — who has just fifteen months on the job — said she was just following her training.
“We are trained that after so many minutes have passed, you do have to walk through the train — to make sure everyone is safe and to make sure they heard your announcements,” she said. “So that’s what I did.”
Footman said she recalled thinking, “if [the passengers] see my face, they’ll be a little bit calmer.”
So she split the train between her and her train operator, and each checked on their passengers.
“[We] walked through, made sure everyone was medically safe, and answered questions,” Footman said. “What I made sure they understood was, ‘We are aware, we are in contact with our operations control center, and as soon as they give us an update, we’ll update you guys’.”
Footman said she was surprised when her effort to keep her passengers calm went viral.
“Number one, I don’t have Twitter,” she said. “People were sending me screenshots — that was amazing.”
“I’m not, like, a flashy-flashy, let me get in front of the news [person],” she said. “It was good to see the recognition.”
MTA chairman Janno Lieber also praised Footman, and thanked her for her “cool head in a difficult circumstance.”
“New Yorkers know, when things go wrong, it makes a difference when you feel like there’s somebody in charge or responsible who really is a first class professional,” he said.
