What, me worry? Not if we build the right stuff. (MTA/Flickr)

MTA chairman and CEO Joe Lhota has thrown his support behind Governor Andrew Cuomo's call for stronger infrastructure to protect New York City from future natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy.

This may not be surprising—after all, the governor is Mr. Lhota's boss—but their unanimity on the matter will lend extra support to the idea of improving the city's defenses against future floods and rising sea levels. That support is especially important when Mayor Bloomberg has so far dismissed calls for strengthened infrastructure around the city.

"We're going to have to evaluate what can be done to prevent it, because quite honestly, Lower Manhattan, the actual track is only 20 feet away from the entrance way, it's not that deep down there," Mr. Lhota told reporters at a briefing earlier today. "So we need to evaluate it. As the Governor said, we need to look at everything. And I think we need to look at what other cities have done, both in Europe where they've dealt with rising tides, as well as in Asia, where they've dealt with rising tides."

Europe and Asia—sound familiar?

Mr. Lhota stressed that this is not just a matter of protecting the subways, but also the entire city. " This is gonna need to be a concerted effort," he said. "It's not just the subways. There's a lot of property downtown. We all have to come together and figure out what to do with it."

That Mr. Lhota has now taken such a public position on the matter is important, because as the governor said on Thursday night, he thinks it will be the MTA's responsibility to fund and maintain any new storm infrastructure. This sounded like a joke at the time, but in some ways, it makes sense. The MTA is, after all, an agency whose primary role is maintaining infrastructure, and while it is most often thought of it terms of transportation, is a bridge or tunnel really that different from a sea gate or damn?

This might more naturally seem to be a job for the Port Authority, but Governor Cuomo is not solely in charge of the Port Authority—he shares that power with the governor of New Jersey—so were Governor Cuomo seeking to exercise unilateral control over a new maritime infrastructure system, the way to go about it might well be through the MTA.

Also, the agency has a history of building great public works. After all, one of its predecessors was the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, now MTA Bridges and Tunnels. That was one of the domains of none other than Robert Moses. So the MTA certainly has the capabilities.

And ultimately, it is their assets they have to figure out a way to protect, to make sure those subways and vehicular tunnels, as well as homes and business, never flood again.

They could use the work, as Mr. Lhota made clear today. "When you think about the subway system, when you think about the fact that it was opened in 1904, it's 108 years old, it opened in Lower Manhattan, it was designed, believe it or not, in the 19th Century," Mr. Lhota said. "They never expected the water would come up as far as it did."

In other words, it is time to start thinking about these things, even if our forebears did not.

The damage done. (MTA/Flickr)

The Broad Channel A-train crossing is at right. (Bing Maps)

The Rockaways have been one of the hardest hit areas of the city following Superstorm Sandy, with lives lost, houses destroyed, crime on the streets. It has also been a remarkably resilient place, with diehard New Yorkers beginning the daunting work of rebuilding. It will be a long time before the Rockaways returns to normal, though, and it turns out that goes for subway service to the area, too.

At a press briefing Thursday night, MTA chief Joe Lhota said it would be some time before A-train service could be restored to the Rockaways due to extensive damage to the Broad Channel crossing that carries the train between Howard Beach in Brooklyn to the Rockaways.

"The amount of destruction on the A-train over Broad Channel is indescribable," Mr. Lhota told reporters. "I've seen it, I've seen pictures of it, the amount of damage, this was almost a direct hit. It's over water, it's through marshland, it's going to take quite a long time to rebuild this, and I'm talking about rebuilding this. I'm talking about the water that went underneath and really affected the structural integrity. This part of the world, what happened in the Rockaways was really devastating. Not only that, but this A-train, that extends from Howard Beach over here, it's just nightmarish."

The Broad Channel crossing runs over three bridges and miles of track just feet from the waters of Jamaica Bay. It can make for a beautiful seen of families on the beach and fishermen, of herons and egrets taking flight, as well as planes from JFK. But during a severe storm such as Sandy, this can prove a liability. Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness, as the Governor Cuomo has said time and again.

The Observer asked if the damage might be as severe as to the Port Jervis line, which was damaged during Hurricane Irene, when debris twisted the tracks out of alignment. It was a job that took three months to complete, but one that was also finished ahead of schedule. Mr. Lhota's answer underscores just how difficult, and lengthy, rebuilding may prove to be.

"I think it's worse than the twisted tracks," Mr. Lhota said. "That was at least on the ground. The foundation of what's holding it up is severely shot, we have to rebuild it."

There are regulatory issues as well. Because the line travels through Gateway National Recreation Area, as well as a bird preserve, the federal government has some oversight over any repairs, which means the MTA could have to submit to not only state but also federal environmental reviews when it comes time to approve the rebuilding plan.

"There's some other issues here, but this is going to take quite a long time, this is going to be a lot of intervention from various different entities that have different oversight over environmental issues—EPA, National Parks, National Wildlife, it's significant," Mr. Lhota said.

The situation remains dire and vague as of today, according to a release this morning from the MTA about the restoration of service: "The Rockaway branch of the A train requires extensive reconstruction and no timetable has been established for resumption of service there."

Courtesy, Professionalism and Raincoats. (Getty)

One of the few bright spots to Hurricane Sandy, besides a new found appreciation for a subway system we too often loathe, is that crime is down, and according to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, there have been no homicides since the storm hit the city Monday night.

"We’ve had no murders for three days," Commissioner Kelly told reporters today inside the portico of City Hall, following the mayor's afternoon press briefing.  "And we’ve also had a reduction in domestic violence."

The commissioner was perhaps choosing his words carefully, saying no murders in three days (not counting Friday it would seem), because there was one murder, still unsolved and even unexplained, that happened Monday night just as the storm was hitting the city. The Times' crime columnist Michael Wilson published the remarkable details of the incident just today.

Commissioner Kelly explained that these things are to be expected, though, as with any natural disaster. "It’s a phenomena we’ve seen before, where there’s bad weather, where there’s any sort of major catastrophe, then crime seems to go down," the commissioner said. "We’ve had a 34 percent reduction in crime over this week."

But that does not go for all types of crimes "We’ve seen a certain increase in burglaries in certain areas of the city," the commissioner said. Those reports were mostly in Staten Island and southern Queens, two of the areas hardest hit by the storms.

The commissioner said he had yet to see similar reports for downtown Manhattan, which has been without power up until tonight, a pronouncement that surprised some reporters. But the commissioner than acknowledged that it may not be that those crimes have not happened but simply that they have not been reported, given the situation downtown.

"There may be a latent effect in terms reporting, people may not be in a position to report it, they may not be aware of it," the commissioner said.

But at least for now it's nice to hope/pretend that everyone was on their best behavior downtown during the storm.

Never again. (MTA/Flickr)

New York has a history of governors who were master builders, Rockefeller, Smith, Carey, Pataki and both Roosevelts among them. Add Andrew Cuomo to that list. While Mayor Bloomberg has so far refused to consider building new infrastructure to help protect New York City from future natural disasters, Gov. Cuomo strongly declared last night that it is his intention to do so.

"I think we have to look at the bigger things," he said at a press briefing yesterday evening. The Observer had asked if he was leaning toward small fixes, like new MTA vents to keep out rainwater, or more grandiose plans, like building locks and storm gates in the harbor (a practice that is popular in Europe). The governor clearly fell into the latter camp, and much of the reason seems to be because he fears this is only the beginning of problems from these natural disasters. After all, he has spent his first two years in office cleaning up after two hurricanes.

"I do not believe these extreme weather patterns are going to end; I do not believe, anymore, that this is once in a lifetime, once in a hundred years, once in a generation or just a fluke," the governor said. "It's happening more and more, with more and more frequency. This is just statistics and probability. You look at the number of devastating floods, the number of devastating fires, the number of extreme weather patterns is going up. That is a fact. That is a fact."

He said you can debate the causes, whether this is a natural cycle or a man-made crisis, but whatever the reason, there will still be freak storms, there will be flooding, there will be new disasters, and something must be done to protect against them. "I'm a governor, I'm an executive, I manage," Gov. Cuomo said. "The effect is the same. The water comes over the bank and fills the subway tunnel. That's the effect; I believe it's going to happen more and more in the future. I don't believe this is the last time."

"These are very expensive, disruptive problems when they happen, and they can be devastating," he added. Therefore, better infrastructure "would be a big solution." Better to pay the price for protection than for rebuilding everything that has been washed away.

When asked what kinds of investments he might make, and whether he could afford to pay for them, since earlier in the press briefing he had mentioned how tight budgets could constrain reconstruction in the region, the governor responded with what may or may not have been a joke.

Gov. Cuomo said he would pay for these projects, but he could not get into it now "because I want the MTA to fund the entire situation. It's going to be multi-billions of dollars and I don't want to tell them that now, because they've been working very hard, they're a little bit cranky, and I'll tell them after they sleep a little bit."

What was most striking is how devoid of life Lower Manhattan is, particularly around the Financial District and Chinatown. Canal Street is eerily empty. But the farther along you get, the more you see. The sheer number of restaurants and bars in the Village operating by candlelight is astonishing. And even all the way downtown, you notice things you wouldn't expect, like tourists making the de rigueur pilgrimage to the Wall Street Bull, where a City Line tour bus happens to pull up. Also, the lights are back on at Zuccotti Park, while they are out across the street. Kind of seems like a waster of precious power, but it is also a refreshing reminder that life goes on.

By the time you get to Midtown, though, it's life as usual, with crowds everywhere—including in front of the Shake Shack in Times Square. And waiting, sometimes an hour or two, in front of Grand Central to cram onto one of those forlorn buses that have replaced the subway back to Brooklyn. So the Sandy tremors have not totally dissipated.

At his press briefing this evening, Gov. Cuomo made a surprise announcement, actually in the middle of talking about what dismal shape the PATH train is in—there appear to be some five miles worth of flooding, the length the line under the Hudson from New York to New Jersey, so that is one thing that will probably be submerged for some time to come. But a place that will not be is the World Trade Center, which, after flooding a good 15 to 20 feet across the site only three days ago, is now dry and in working order.

"Work will recommence at the Ground Zero site tonight," Gov. Cuomo declared. I was just congratulating some of the workers; there was tremendous flooding at the Ground Zero site. We went from seeing the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel turned into a flume, we walked up the World Trade Center site, where water was cascading into the site from every imaginable angle, at such a decibel level it was disorienting. The entire site was flooded."

But through an almost miraculous, and certainly Herculean, pumping and recovery effort, led in part by the Army Corps of Engineers, the site has been cleared in a fraction of the time anticipated. "They originally anticipated it would be two to three weeks before they could get back to work," the governor said. "But instead of two to three weeks, they've gotten it done in three or four days, and the work will recommence tonight on the site, and you'll see light on again at the site."

And indeed we did on the way home, along with a few other buildings way downtown, including the Goldman Sachs headquarters, the American International Building with its red spire and 7 World Trade, with its roof lit up bright as a candle. It just so happens that earlier in the day, The Observer spotted a construction lift in operation on Larry Silverstein's World Trade Center tower 4, but it was not clear if it was an inspection or construction work.

While it could still be days, if not longer, before downtown finally gets all its lights back, it is nice to see these buildings back up, especially given their symbolic nature. "The Ground Zero site will be illuminated once again," Gov. Cuomo said. "New York goes back to work."

Joe Lhota shows off his custom MetroNorth map. (Matt Chaban)

The green lines are downed trees, the red dots are washouts. (Matt Chaban)

The good news is, the subways are coming back to life with remarkable resilience. The bad news is even more would be running if there were power in Lower Manhattan.

Following a briefing with Gov. Cuomo this evening, MTA chairman and CEO Joe Lhota walked reporters through the status of the city's subway system and the regional rail lines. As of now, the M train is running again in Queens and Brooklyn in two sections: from Jamiaca Center in Queens to Midtown, though it is skipping Queens Plaza and Court Square and getting to 42nd Street via the F line tunnel, and the M train shuttle from Middle Village in Queens to Myrtle Avenue.

The 7 train will also begin service tomorrow, possibly as soon as midnight, but only from Main Street in Flushing to 74th Street, Broadway Station. From there, straphangers can transfer to the F or M trains into Manhattan.

"We're going to bring service back as quickly as possible," Mr. Lhota said, "but we are going to be doing it incrementally.

Now, if Con Edison had not already come in for enough grief, the Lexington Line would be fully operational from the Bronx to Brooklyn, as would the F train from Queens to just before Coney Island in Brooklyn, if only there were power downtown. On the bright side, Mr. Lhota said he could full restore power to those lines within two hours of the system regaining power, but that is still not expected until the weekend.

So while the MTA has done a breathtaking job pumping out the East River subway lines--a third, for the 2/3 line is clear of water but not yet operational, and more are expected to be emptied out by tomorrow--there is little to do to finish the massive doughnut hole in the subway system until power is back.

"We're waiting on power," Mr. Lhota said. "It's really important, we can't do it without that third rail lit."

You can find the current service map here.

Brooklyn is out of gas, literally and figuratively. (Ian Lamb)

This reporter heard from a friend last night that they had seen a line for gas on Empire Boulevard, on the border of Brooklyn's Crown Heights and Flatbush neighborhoods, that stretched for 10 blocks. Meanwhile, special corespondent Ian Lamb came upon this scene in Kensington:

This line for gas in Kensington went all the way down the block. More than 20 cars. There was a news truck from YNN in line, too. It was the one of only two stations I saw with gas in all of Kensington, Ditmas Park, Midwood, and Windsor Terrace. The line for the other one was so long that the police were there controlling traffic. More 10 stations with no gas.

I had to stop looking because I was already on empty. All these cars were shut off to conserve fuel while waiting. I want to help transport goods to the Rockaways tomorrow but I can't, if I can't find gas. I imagine they'll get shipments overnight tonight, or in the morning, but it's chaos right now.

We're all hoping he makes it.

No lights, no glow. (Ian Lamb)

The Williamsburg Bridge. Well, half of it. (Ian Lamb)

With these pics from last night, there's not much to say (and it seems like there will be pretty much the same story tonight). We just went to the East River Ferry dock in Greenpoint to check out the skyline. As you know, usually there's a halo of light over the city, but now it just stops around 34th Street.

The rest is a void.

Uptown, where there's still power, you can see all the light reflected in the clouds, and then south of that there is just nothing. It also was very odd seeing the Williamsburg Bridge exactly half lit-up. Seeing the city from across the river you can really get a sense of just how many people are without power right now—a massive amount of people, living in close quarters.

And jesus, just think about all the housing developments along the East River. They run from at least 14th Street all the way down to Chinatown. You could see the outlines of those big square buildings just kinda lumbering there in the dark as far as you could see.

After all this, the bridges are back—and more popular than ever. (Getty)

Mayor Bloomberg just announced at his first press briefing today that due to bumper-to-bumper traffic in Manhattan today, all East River crossings will be HOV-restricted starting tonight at 6 p.m. This means any vehicles wishing to enter Manhattan will have to have at least three passengers inside. The restrictions will be in place all day Thursday and Friday.

"We need to reduce the number of cars coming in. The streets cannot handle all the traffic," Mayor Bloomberg said. He said the city would try and figure out a way to allow people to arrange for rides, either at the crossings or elsewhere, but no details were given.

"I know it's inconvenient for a lot of people, but the streets just can't handle it," the mayor said.

The crossings only just reopened today, with the exception of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Rockaway Bridges and the flooded tunnels, the Brooklyn-Battery/Hugh Carey and the Holland, which the mayor said he does not expect to reopen until the weekend or next Monday at the earliest.

He made the same prediction about the subways, which are expected to resume partial service tomorrow, though none will be going under the rivers.

Not surprisingly, hard-working New Yorkers, being the Type-A types they are, flooded the streets on their way to work and other destinations, generally crippling the streets and reminding us all how the MTA is actually pretty awesome.