By Matt Chaban 11/15/12 8:11am

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Video

Screen Shot 2012-11-15 at 11.23.45 AM

Inside the Flooded Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and a New Genre of Ruin Porn

Last night, the MTA posted a video of the cleanup effort going on inside the Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which had reopened just the day before after a monstrous flood.

It is a burgeoning genre, after the MTA gave the L train tubes the same treatment—not every effort got a star turn, just the slow ones, as though to say, “Look, we’re workin’ on it.” That and the jaw-dropping ones, like flooding inside the (still-closed) South Ferry subway station (and the cleanup). Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/13/12 4:34pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

5 Photos

Traffic Returns to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel

The Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel Just Reopened—And Already There’s Traffic

Governor Cuomo came to the mouth of the Hugh Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel less than an hour ago with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and MTA chief Joe Lhota to announce that one tube of the formerly flooded tunnel would be opening to traffic at 4 o’clock today. Within minutes of his entourage departing,  the cars did indeed begin flowing in. Town cars, Range Rovers, some foreign and domestic sedans, at least two Cadillacs and, of course, numerous cabs.

It was a regular stream of New York City wheels. And as so often happens when such vehicles tend to cluster, there was a back-up. Yes, traffic. Perhaps life is getting back to normal.

“In many ways, for me, this site a metaphor for the entire storm,” Governor Cuomo said, from the awesome power of Mother Nature that first hit the city during Hurricane Sandy to the awesome rebuilding effort the MTA and others undertook. Read More