It’s no secret that Gov. Andrew Cuomo seeks greater control over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But Tuesday’s MTA board meeting — on his idea to cancel the long-planned shutdown of the L-train tunnel — was a three-hour advertisement for checks and balances on the governor’s transit power.
The meeting was an unmitigated disaster for the MTA, which has no solid plan to cancel the shutdown, only a desire to please the governor. That was revealed thanks only to the presence of board members not beholden to Cuomo.
Until earlier this month, the MTA had spent years planning to shut down the L train between Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn and 14th Street in Manhattan. The 15-month closure would have allowed workers to remove and replace concrete-encased power and communication cables damaged by Superstorm Sandy more than five years ago.
To lessen disruptions for 275,000 daily riders, the MTA and city were all set to provide more buses, ferries and bikes. Two weeks ago, though, Cuomo swooped in to rescue riders from the shutdown, saying it wasn’t necessary. A gaggle of academics had supposedly figured out how to do the work on nights and weekends.
So what is the new plan? Even though the governor pushed for the emergency meeting, it was clear that the authority’s management, which he does control, still doesn’t have the answers.
First unanswered question: A key part of the MTA’s new plan is the idea that it won’t have to rip out all of the concrete walls that run through the tunnels. Instead, it will just have to rip out some of them and will wrap the rest with fiberglass and epoxy.
But some is not none. The MTA still doesn’t know exactly how much wall it will have to rip up. That matters — because this work creates dangerous dust.
Having to ready tunnels for passenger service every Monday will cut into the time that workers have for reconstruction. As board member Polly Trottenberg noted, if workers can’t finish in time any given Monday, it could disrupt traffic for rush hour without warning.
The second question is cost. The shutdown was supposed to cost $500 million. But that assumed workers with full shifts. As Andy Byford, who heads the New York City Transit Authority, said Tuesday, workers can only get in about five full hours of real work on nights-only shifts. So … overtime.
Cost is compounded by the MTA’s refusal to cancel its existing contract and bid out another one, even though the project is now radically different. As Carl Weisbrod, another independent board member, asked: “How can we have a set of contractors and advisers and experts who gave us potentially wrong advice in 2015” now tell the MTA its new approach is the right one?
Finally, disruption. The MTA seems to think “nights and weekends” are an afterthought. But tens of thousands of people depend on the L train after-hours. The original shutdown plan accommodated these riders. Now, the MTA will ask them to wait 20 minutes between packed trains.
We did get a couple of clues, though — and they weren’t reassuring. First, Neal Zuckerman, another non-Cuomo board member, asked the MTA’s contractors if there is any downside to the new plan. He got an honest answer from one of the contractors: The original approach would have offered a more durable solution.
The same contractor noted that new wrapping for the concrete walls will indeed melt “if exposed to fire.” What is the risk?
Finally, the L-train shutdown was supposed to be a demonstration project: proof that New York could live for a while without a major subway line. Remember that Byford is pushing a plan to modernize the signals on much of the subway system within the next four years; such an aggressive schedule, which has already lost a year over the state’s failure to figure out how to pay for it, will be impossible without other shutdowns.
The MTA board must vote on this huge change — but it needs more information. Yet the MTA, under acting chairman Freddy Ferrer, Cuomo’s man, is trying to steamroll its board.
The puzzle is: Why? The L-train shutdown isn’t ideal. But the city prepared for it as best it could. Cuomo’s forcing the MTA to backtrack has only sown confusion. Ironically, the governor is inadvertently making the case for an independent MTA. It’s an odd way to start off a third term — creating a problem that didn’t exist.
This piece originallly appeared at the New York Post
______________________
Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post