WATCH LIVE: MTA Emergency Meeting On L Train Shutdown

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — The MTA Board's emergency meeting to discuss Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to avoid an L train shutdown will stream live on the authority's website.

The meeting, set to begin at 12 p.m. Tuesday, will go over plans devised by Cuomo's team of engineers and MTA experts that would avert the 15-month shutdown of the subway line set to begin in April. The new plan would shut down only one of the Canarsie tunnel's two lanes at a time and use new methods to fix damage caused by superstorm Sandy.

The MTA Board's approval is needed for the agency to officially go forward with the new approach.

Watch the meeting here:

Cuomo had called for the emergency meeting to be held when he said on Jan. 4 that the board would need to approve any new plans before they go forward, a seeming backtrack from his and MTA Acting Chair Fernando Ferrer's announcement just a day earlier that the L-pocolypse had been averted.

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Consulting firm WSP will recommend to the board Tuesday that the plans be approved.

"WSP has studied the proposed design alternatives and the preliminary new construction schedule developed by the construction manager," MTA said in a release. "WSP will be recommending to the Board that it pursue the modified plan as a better alternative, as it does not require a total shutdown of train service."

Photo by Ciara McCarthy/Patch