It started with a chance meeting in Brooklyn late last year, when an irate man told Gov. Andrew Cuomo that closing the subway tunnel for 15 months would hurt his community. It ended with a news conference so quickly thrown together that members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, which oversees the subway, were told 11 minutes before it began.
In between, Cuomo took a midnight tour of the tunnel with a panel of experts he drafted to find a better way.
The experts came up with a different plan to repair the tunnel — a critical link between Manhattan and Brooklyn that carries 250,000 people each day. They worked relentlessly on it, even on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
On Thursday, Cuomo and the experts dropped a bombshell: The L train would not shut down in April.
The decision was mostly celebrated by L train riders who got to keep their lifeline to Manhattan, but it also raised questions about whether the new plan could actually work and why Cuomo waited until the last minute to weigh in.
On Friday, Cuomo introduced fresh uncertainty over the L train’s future when he reversed course and said the repairs would need to be approved by the MTA board. He called for the board to hold an emergency meeting to consider his plan.
The announcement Thursday came together so hastily that even the MTA board was kept out of the loop. An email arrived at 12:34 p.m., alerting board members that the authority’s chairman, Fernando Ferrer, had accepted the panel’s recommendations. Cuomo’s news conference began at 12:45 p.m.
Asked whether the board had to approve the repair plan, Cuomo said, “I don’t believe so.” Ferrer clarified that the board would, in fact, have to approve a new contract for the work.
Veronica Vanterpool, a board member appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, said Ferrer’s support was premature.
“The original proposal would have fixed and repaired the tunnel for 50 or 60 years,” Vanterpool said. “It’s not clear to me the longevity of this solution.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.