Cuomo May Have Spoken Too Soon When He Announced No L Shutdown

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — It seems Governor Andrew Cuomo and MTA officials may have spoken too soon when they said Thursday that the city will go ahead with a new plan to avoid the L train shutdown. The U turn still has to clear the MTA board, Cuomo said Friday.

In a conference call with reporters, Cuomo said the MTA board will need to vote on whether they want to pursue a plan devised by his team of experts, which he announced Thursday would fix the Canarsie tunnel damage without the originally-planned 15-month shutdown of the subway line.

He then called for an emergency meeting for the board to hear about and vote on the plan.

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But Friday's comments seem to backtrack from what Cuomo and MTA Acting Chairman Fernando Ferrer said in their initial announcement just a day before — that the MTA had reviewed the plans and decided to go ahead with the expert's recommendations.

Cuomo also seemed to imply Friday that, even if the board decides to go ahead with the new approach, there would be even more steps to make it a reality.

"If they pursue the plan there's secondary questions - they'd have to renegotiate the contract with the contractors because the scope of work is different, et cetera," he said, according to a partial transcript of the call. "So there's a number of details they would have to pursue. But the first question is, does the MTA want to pursue the plan? And that requires the board to hear the plan and make the decision."

Ferrer had said during Thursday's press conference that talks had already begun to alter the contract with contractors hired to pursue the original 15-month shutdown. Both he and a statement later that day from the MTA, said the shutdown had been called off because the transit authority decided to go ahead with the new recommendations.

"Based on these recommendations, we will not be shutting down the tunnel," Ferrer said Thursday. "No L-pocolypse."

Cuomo also said in that Thursday press conference that the plan, which would shut down just one of the tunnel's two tubes nights and weekends, had already been reviewed already by the MTA.

He added both days that MTA's own experts had also been involved in coming up with the new approach, but added Friday that that might not mean it will become a reality.

"I can tell you that their consultants on the project all think this alternative works and makes sense because they were part of the collaborative that concluded on this plan," Cuomo said in the call. "But, that's all irrelevant, really, because it's up to the MTA board and those 17 members which are appointed by various political entities and have their own perspectives."

It was not immediately apparent whether MTA had scheduled the emergency meeting as of Friday afternoon.

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