So there's this thing. It's called a mayoral's race. Heard of it? Any idea who's running? If you can name a single candidate, you're an outlier—55 percent of the New Yorkers we asked couldn't. That's one of the take-home messages from our Race to Gracie Mansion 2013 street polling project: very low awareness of the upcoming election. Only one candidate approaches broad name recognition, and it's not for his policy smarts. Browse the full results here, and tell us who you plan to support. Not sure yet? Keep reading Politicker for up-to-the-minute mayor's race news.

The winning proposal for the Kips Bay site, by Monadnock, Actors Fund Housing and nARCHITECTS.

New York's first micro-apartment building hasn't even broken ground yet, but the city is already planning more. At a luncheon hosted by the Citizens Housing Planning Council today, Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Matthew Wambua announced that new requests for proposals will be issued for more micro-apartment sites.

"We are considering RFPs for two or three micro-unit developments later this year," a HPD spokesman told The Observer after the event. "We’re in the process of vetting a number of city-owned sites, and RFP guidelines will be tailored to the chosen sites."

The announcement comes a few months after Monadnock Development, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation and nARCHITECTS were selected from among 33 development teams, including names like the Durst Organization and Ron Moelis's L+M Development Patners, as the winners of the adAPT NYC contest.

Their building, to be constructed using prefabricated techniques on a city-owned site at 335 East 27th Street in Kips Bay, will feature 55 apartments spread out over ten stories, ranging in size from 250 to 370 square feet. Forty percent of the units will be "affordable," in this case defined as having rents from $940 to $1,800 per month.

After Mr. Wambua spoke, Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota accepted CHPC's Roger Starr Public Service award, and gave a short speech outlining his views on affordable housing, which he called New York City's most pressing concern.

Mr. Lhota stated that he would prefer to incentivize the production of affordable housing units through tax credits rather than the direct provision that characterized the Koch administration.

He also spoke about the need for retail and supermarkets at New York City Housing Authority projects, perhaps alluding to NYCHA's Land Lease program that will see private developments rise on parking lots and other underutilized land in Housing Authority projects.

(Photo: 92Y.org)

With less than six months to go until the primaries, the New York Observer and the 92nd Street Y have teamed up to host an evening of discussion with all of the major mayoral candidates.  The event starts in one hour and, if you can't make it to the 92nd Street Y to see it in person, you can watch live online right here. 

The evening will include two separate debates. First up will be the Republican candidates; John Catsimatidis, Joseph Lhota and George McDonald. Next will be the Democrats; Sal Albanese, Bill de Blasio, John Liu, Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson. Both debates will be moderated by New York Observer editor-in-chief Ken Kurson and Cozen O'Connor member Kenneth K. Fisher.

Tune in below to watch the action at 7:30.

Robert Moses may be dead, but the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority lives on.

Joe Lhota, it seems, wants to finish the job that Governor Nelson Rockefeller started. Speaking to the Staten Island Advance last week, the frontrunner laid out the most ambitious transportation proposal yet of the 2013 mayoral race: give New York City back its bridges and tunnels.

"The former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority," the editorial board wrote, "said that if he were to be elected mayor, he would seek to get full mayoral control of the bridges and tunnels in the city."

Aside from the untolled East River bridges that belong to the city—the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges—major river crossings between the five boroughs belong to the state, under the guise of the MTA Bridges and Tunnels.

This division retains the legal name "Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority," a testament to Robert Moses's iron-clad bond covenants and their origins as his primary source of power. He used these tax-free, oversight-free sources of revenue to fund the public works empire he directed from Randall's Island, blanketing the outer boroughs and even the fringes of Manhattan with highways, parkways and transit-free river crossings. Through this slush fund he subsidized automobile travel in a city that had hitherto been almost completely dependent on mass transit.

In 1968, Gov. Rockefeller eventually succeeded where so many others had failed, and wrested control of the Triborough Authority, named after Moses' signature spans, away from New York's master builder. He directed the money instead to the newly created Metropolitan Transportation Authority, under the control of the governor, where it remains today.

If Joe Lhota gets his way, however, this may all change. The Advance framed the policy as toll relief—at least to Staten Islanders. Brooklyn and Queens motorists, though, could see tolls for the first time on their bridges. "Put all the bridges and tunnels under the control of one entity, namely the city," wrote the Advance, "and we have a shot at genuine toll equity"—in other words, we'd be half way to congestion pricing.

But putting New York City's bridges and tunnels under the authority of the city could also do something else, unmentioned by the Staten Island Advance: give the city a say in the MTA.

Currently the MTA is funded almost entirely through the state, through taxes and tolls, and the federal government, which gives out grants for capital projects. If the city regained the money that currently goes straight into MTA coffers—$940 million in 2011 after expenses, according to MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg—it could remit this back to the MTA, but with one crucial difference: the city would have the power of the purse, if not direct control.

Because the city is more dependent on the MTA than the state, it may be better placed to oversee to the agency. Self-professed "car guy" Andrew Cuomo, for example, has dragged his feet on replacing Joe Lhota as head of the MTA, and has made the Tappan Zee, not transit, his signature public works initiative.

That said, there are also reasons to be skeptical that the city would do any better than the state. Michael Bloomberg, for example, spent $1.4 billion in city money on the 7 train extension to the Far West Side, but did not put any pressure on the agency to spend it more wisely than it does on its other, non-city-funded projects. As a result of this inability to control costs—the 7 train extension, like all of the MTA's other capital projects, is shockingly expensive when viewed against comparable projects outside of the United States—the extension lost its station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street, cutting its utility in half.

And the City Council is even worse. Its "oversight" sessions often devolve into parochial gripe fests by city officials with only the most tenuous grasp on how New York City transit works.

Then again, Joe Lhota obviously has more transit acumen than City Council and Mayor Bloomberg.

But aside from political concerns, there's the question of how the city could, legally speaking, retake control over its bridges and tunnels. Moses's skillful manipulation of bond covenants made even the MTA takeover difficult even back in in the '60s. As Robert Caro detailed in The Power Broker, it may not have been possible were it not for the fact that Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's brother David was president of the Chase Manhattan Bank at the time, the largest holder of Triborough bonds.

But if Joe Lhota can get elected and surmount these obstacles—big ifs—then gaining control over the city's bridges and tunnels might give him at least a modicum of control over an even bigger (though familiar) prize: the city's subways.

Mr. Flood. (MTA/Flickr)

It's beginning to feel a bit like the letters section of the New York Review of Books around here.

Yesterday morning, The Observer published a post highlighting another outlet's revelation that developer and civic leader Bill Rudin was somewhat pleased that the Hugh Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel had flooded, thereby protecting some of his buildings downtown. (Some experts agree that the tunnels should actually be designed to do exactly that.)

Unexpectedly, Mr. Rudin's office sent a statement from him to The Observer in the afternoon, speaking generally about the need to plan for the future, but not directly addressing the issue of the tunnel or MTA Chief Joe Lhota, who had told Capital New York, "I wasn’t particularly pleased with the comment.” Now, unbidden, The Observer has received a statement from Mr. Lhota that praises Mr. Rudin.

Bill Rudin is one of New York City’s most ardent champions, and the Rudin Family has long been at the forefront advocating for the city’s future and for all New Yorkers.  Bill and I witnessed the horrific damage of Superstorm Sandy and we both concluded that we must have a comprehensive effort by the federal, state and local governments and the private sector to prevent such water surge damage to property in the future.  I have no doubt that Bill will be an exemplary leader of this effort.

The real lesson here seems to be: Be careful what you blog about.

A good flood? (Getty)

Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc across the city, including Lower Manhattan, where flooding into tunnels shut down both subway and vehicular traffic for weeks. In a story looking at flooding in the Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery tunnel, Dana Rubinstein reveals that none other than developer, macher and civic bigwig Bill Rudin actually welcomed the flooding because it protected some of his harborside buildings.

"I had one very prominent real estate builder who owns buildings in lower Manhattan—actually all over the city—thank me for allowing the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel to be used as a drainage ditch," M.T.A. chairman Joe Lhota told me recently. "I wasn’t particularly pleased with the comment.”

(Lhota confirmed during our conversation that he was referring to Bill Rudin.)

The M.T.A. has recently begun to float different ideas for protecting the system's tunnels in the future from flooding during such storms, which are expected to increase in frequency as the climate warms. Industrial balloons and flood gates are among the ideas under discussion.

But as Rudin's comments indicate, protecting the tunnels might create problems elsewhere. "The fact of the matter is, if I plug it up, we plug it up, the M.T.A. plugs it up—if God forbid this happens again, the surge is the same or even higher, the water will go elsewhere," said Lhota.

And elsewhere could include the lower floors of nearby buildings, like those owned by Rudin Management at One Battery Park Plaza and One Whitehall Street. Rudin, the scion of a storied New York real estate family and chairman of the influential Association for a Better New York, declined comment.

But even more intriguing than the revelation that a self-styled civic leader welcomed ill on the city's infrastructure is the conclusion of the article, which argues that perhaps we should all embrace such Schadenfreude.

After all, if the tunnels could be designed to serve as moats, with their mechanical systems carefully protected, and easily pumped dry, they could actually serve as yet another form of so-called soft infrastructure serving to protect the city from future disasters. Insulating some cables and installing some pumps would probably be a lot cheaper than building those giant sea gates. The same goes for what we put in the basements of our buildings. Though then there's a debate about all that unused, and often valuable space going empty. Putting the mechanicals upstairs takes up living space, and who wants a boiler in the living room?

Still, rather than trying to stop the water, is there a way we can successfully live with it inside our buildings? That may become the design challenge of 21st-century New York.

Update: Mr. Rudin shares a statement on the future of the city's flood protections.

Update 12/6:Mr. Lhota issued a statement praising Mr. Rudin.

Blue steel! (MTA)

The "I Survived the Frankenstorm" shirts had already hit street corners and Etsy shops within days of the hurricane battering New York. But here's some Sandy swag that actually goes toward a good cause. The MTA has created a limited edition line of H train memorabilia, including T-shirts, hoodies, pins and magnets, and all proceeds go to the Graybeards, a Rockaways charity that has been helping out with the superstorm recovery. And who better to model the new line than MTA chief Joe Lhota, hero of the storm.

“We were looking for a way to use our licensed products to help out in the recovery efforts taking place in the Rockaways,” Mark Heavey, MTA Director of Marketing & Communications, said in a release. “The H Line has piqued a lot of interest in subway service in the Rockaways and, with the help of a few of our product licensees, presented us with a unique opportunity to promote the service and to provide tangible assistance to efforts to rebuild that community.”

The gear is available on the MTA's Transit Museum online store.

The H train began running a few weeks ago, providing free shuttle service within the storm-battered peninsula. After the Broad Channel crossing was nearly destroyed by Sandy, it will take months for A train service to resume as normal.

Correction:The gear is only available online, not at the Transit Museum's retail outlets in Brooklyn and Grand Central, as previously reported. The Observer regrets the error.

The first L train. (Joe Lhota/Twitter)

Joe Lhota just made it official on Twitter. There's really nothing more to say. There will be a lot of crying into beers in North Brooklyn tonight—tears of joy, of course!—as almost a week without L train service comes to an end. How long before the cheering ends and the crowded misery resumes?

Update:The tunnel was flooded with some 15 feet of water along its 3,400-foot length under the East River, according to a release from the MTA. The agency had said before that this was the most seriously flooded line, owing to its main vent being right on the shore of the East River in Williamsburg. Starting over the weekend, crews were furiously pumping out the tunnel, working 24-hours a day, and still, it was not until yesterday that the work was complete.

It appears that any major announcements about subway restoration have come to an end. The N line to Coney from 59th Street in Sunset Park and the A line to the Rockaways currently have indeterminate reopening horizons, following serious damage to those above-ground lines. South Ferry is also closed, limiting service on the No. 1 and R trains downtown.

“We continue to progress toward the complete restoration of service and will continue to do so incrementally, but only when it’s safe and doesn’t overcharge the system,” Mr. Lhota said in the release. “However, much work remains to restore service in the Rockaways and along the Sea Beach Line in Brooklyn, which were devastated by Hurricane Sandy

Let's eat. (EPA)

Just before Hurricane Sandy hit, everyone was busy stocking up provisions to weather the maelstrom. Following the storm, there was a scramble to to find more to eat as stores were empty and restaurants closed. This is a city of gourmands, after all. For the city officials who were responsible for guiding the city through the disaster, this was no exception.

While we were compiling our oral history of Hurricane Sandy, Joe Lhota mentioned that even in the worst of the storm, he had managed to keep his daily dietary regimen intact. This got us wondering: what was everybody eating while they scrambled around getting the city ready and helping it recover? Here is what the protectors and providers of the city had on their plates and in their pockets.

Joe Lhota, chairman and CEO, MTA: Even in the middle of the storm, I had what I always have—an omelet with two sausage patties. It's what I eat every morning. Would that be a cheese omelet? Is there any other kind? I don't put shit in them. Who needs onions in the morning? It's all protein, no carbs for breakfast, and that's the only thing I eat until dinner time.

Ray Kelly, commissioner, NYPD: He eats two patties a day, huh? Jeeze! He eats that stuff? I'm trying to eat egg whites. I had those Dunkin' Donuts egg white things, the sandwiches. I've had several of those. But I won't have anymore for a while.

It's funny because you take food for granted. I'm out riding around, and a place is closed, lots of places to eat are closed down. When the subways are closed, the restaurants are closed because they can't get their workers in there. It's something that is driven home sort of dramatically when you drive down Columbus Avenue, you think, "Hey there's no flooding here." Yeah, but they can't get their workers to work. Food suddenly became much more of an issue.

Sal Cassano, commissioner, FDNY: I think I ate a granola bar for dinner the night of the storm, and that was it.

Janette Sadik-Khan, commissioner, NYC DOT: I’ve been eating a lot of granola bars, a lot of granola bars. And they serve peanut butter sandwiches at every relief station, so between the granola bars and peanut butter and jelly, that’s it. Fortunately I walk up and down the stairs at home and work, and when you’re out all day in the field, I hope it won’t be too damaging.

Josh Vlasto, communications director, Cuomo administration: I don't want to sound complain-y, but when you're on the road, we haven't been eating that much. On the days when you're doing four or five stops, you leave at 10 in the morning and your don't get back to the office till 4 in the morning. It's a lot of granola bars and bottled water that you pick up. But people have been ordering pizza. But nothing has been open. Lots of granola bars, lets put it that way. It's a lot of throwing granola bars into the jacket and munching along the way.

Joe Bruno, commissioner, NYC OEM: Well I didn't eat that much. I mean, we do feed people here, so I'm a big salad person. If I can get fish I'm very happy, but we didn't get much of that. Mainly salads, a little bit of rice and little bit of bread. But I'm a skinny guy. I don't eat that much. There was pizza. I don't eat that stuff, but some of them do, unfortunately.

Cas Holloway, deputy mayor for operations: I was at OEM, and my hurricane diet was coffee. And I had a trail mix that I had that I actually had brought. Store-bought? No, no, I made it, I make my own. I go to this place called Nut Box and I make my own mix, and I had it in a big jar, and I was eating it by the fistful. Will you share your secret recipe? Almonds, cashews and dried apricots, dried cherries. And a little bit of coconut flaked shavings. It’s quite good.

Howard Glaser, director of state operations, Cuomo administration: Coffee, Coke, bagels.

John Rhea, chairman, NYCHA: I had a couple boxes of Ritz crackers that I was running around with, a bunch of bottles of water, and I had some spaghetti that I made with a little sauce. That tasted just as good cold, but it was even better if it was room temperature.

Robert LiMandri, commissioner, DOB: I didn’t eat very much all week. I remember having chicken soup on Monday, and that was probably the last time I ate for two and a half days. I didn’t have an appetite, standing down there, watching that crane.

Maybe we can raise the fares while nobody's looking? (MTA/Flickr)

Even though it started with a shutdown of service, Hurricane Sandy has probably engendered more love for the MTA then the transit agency has seen at least since the 1960s, before the system went to seed. The subway may well be enjoying more praise than ever in its 108-year history. Unless you live in North Brooklyn, restoration of the transit system came about remarkably fast in a city that had been devastated in every corner. The patience, and the appreciation, has been remarkable for an agency rarely accustomed to either.

But the love-in may well end tonight. That is when the MTA is due to hold its first hearing on the looming fare hikes for all corners of the mass transit system—not just those MetroCards, but also fares on the commuter rail lines and tolls on the bridges and (still flooded) tunnels. The meeting will be held in Brooklyn, at the Marriott at 333 Adams Street starting at 5 p.m. Doors are at 4 p.m., for those who want to get there early to sign up and speak. Another meeting was scheduled for Farmingdale, out on Long Island, but it has been canceled because, you know, they're still without power.

It will be curious to see how the public reacts at tonight's hearing. No doubt there will be praise heaped on the agency for its response to the storm, though also probably a bit of frustration, particularly from those North Brooklynites. But hey, at least the G train is running again, so they can get to the meeting.

One thing the hurricane will not do is help tamp down the hikes. This was a thought that had crossed our mind—the storm has shown the importance of mass transit, so maybe it could be used to draw political support to the cause, get Albany to come up with some sort of alternative funding stream for the MTA.

During an interview for our oral history of the storm response, we asked Mr. Lhota whether there was any way he thought that might happen.

"I don’t think that this staves off the fare hike that we’re going to have public hearings on relatively soon, but I do think it positions the MTA—it provides the MTA with more credibility of how important it is," Mr. Lhota said. "Not only do I have to make this place efficient, I’ve got to tell the world it’s efficient. There are elected officials who don’t run against their real opponent, they run against the MTA. Not all but some, and those some are quite vocal.

Mr. Lhota said that he has to combat those attitudes, and that the storm, in an ironic way, made that a little easier. "I don’t want to make it easy for people to pick on the MTA, I want us to provide the best possible service we possibly can, and I want to be able to prove to everyone how important we are for the economy, because it’s the economy. We’re not the goose that laid the golden egg, we’re like the wing of the goose that laid the golden egg. We get everybody there so they can go to work."

Indeed, as we saw last week, no MTA, no work, or at least one hell of a traffic jam. If anything, tonight might make us pine for the days right after the storm, when the buses were free.

At least fares will not rise even higher because of the storm. A reporter put the question to Gov. Cuomo last week, and he said he would see to it that the MTA was made whole by FEMA or insurers, whatever it took. Given all the damage to the system, it seems a legitimate concern that somehow fares might suddenly jump to $3 a pop after all this mayhem.