The MTA's widely dreaded but necessary project to repair the L train tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn is now complete, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Sunday. Speaking to reporters during his daily COVID-19 press briefing, Cuomo framed the news in the context of his administration's response to the pandemic.
Referring to his intention to "move forward" and "reimagine" New York State post-coronavirus, as opposed to simply "reopening" the economy, Cuomo described how he intervened in the MTA's initial L train plan, which would have closed the tunnel completely for at least 15 months. At the 11th hour, Cuomo's outside experts proposed an alternative, to partially close the tunnel for repairs on nights and weekends.
"The opposition to this new idea was an explosion," Cuomo recalled on Sunday. "'I was a meddler. I didn't have an engineering degree. They were outside experts. How dare you question the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy knows better.' It was a thunderstorm of opposition, but we did it anyway."
Cuomo said the project is done today under budget and ahead of schedule, after 12 months of work to repair damage caused by Superstorm Sandy.
"I relay this story because you can question, and you should question, why we do what we do," Cuomo said. "Why not try this? Why not try that? People don't like change. We like control more than anything. It's hard to make change in you own life, but if you don't change you don't grow."
Work on the tunnel began last April after Cuomo put a halt to the MTA's original plan and implemented his alternative plan, which involved reinforcing crumbling sections of the tunnel walls with a fiber polymer, then racking new fireproof electrical and communications cables along the sides of the tunnel. New subway tracks were installed, as well as a new pumping system with double the capacity to handle flooding during extreme weather events.
The work was performed entirely on nights and weekends, resulting in L trains spaced 20 minutes apart as they shared a single tube in both directions.
The revised project's cost has not been disclosed, but the MTA has said that the total cost won't be more than the originally budgeted $477 million.
Critics of Cuomo's faster alternative worry that reinforcing the tunnel's benchwall will not be as effective, over the long term, as rebuilding it would have been.
During an MTA board meeting last year, consulting engineer Mike Abrahams conceded that it "certainly would have been advantageous for long-term service life" to tear out and replace the benchwall.
But the MTA says a new fiber optic monitoring system of the tunnel's benchwall allows engineers to "constantly scrutinize" the tunnel and make fixes "based on the constant and real-time data reporting of movement and temperature changes instead of waiting until significant issues arise."
"While New Yorkers continue to cope with the devastating impact of COVID-19, the L train project completion is timely proof that when we are confronted with a challenge we can build back better and stronger - especially when we work together and think outside the box," Cuomo said in a statement issued Sunday.
The MTA says L train service will resume its previous service schedules on Monday, with adjustments under the MTA coronavirus Essential Service Plan. This currently means, for example, L train riders can expect a train to come every 10-12 minutes on weekends during the busy times.
"Additional project elements" are still being finished as well, and some work will still continue into the fall of 2020, according to the MTA. These final touches include work on new subway entrances at the First Avenue and Bedford Avenue stops, as well as the addition of new electrical substations, which will enable the MTA to run trains more frequently through the tunnel.
