When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently announced its decision to shut down part of the A subway line for extensive repairs, the decision upset many of the 9,000 riders who take the route each day.
But it turns out there’s another dissatisfied New Yorker: former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
Transit officials had announced that part of the A train line in the Rockaways would be closed for four months, starting in January, to make repairs to a bridge that was damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Mr. Cuomo was skeptical. In a widely distributed email, he argued that there had to be another way, comparing the situation with a similar planned shutdown of the L train to Brooklyn in 2019.
“Don’t take the bureaucracy’s word for it,” Mr. Cuomo said in the statement released on Sunday. “Convene the best experts and find a better way to get it done. Leadership matters.”
Mr. Cuomo, of course, has his reasons to weigh in.
As a potential candidate in next year’s New York City mayoral race, Mr. Cuomo has been eager to voice his views on any number of subjects, from crime to cost of living to immigration. And on this particular topic, he believes he speaks from experience.
In 2019, Mr. Cuomo halted a planned 15-month shutdown of a major subway tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn that would have caused one of the biggest transportation disruptions in New York City’s history, affecting 250,000 daily riders on the L line.
Instead, he ordered transit officials to use a different approach by mounting cables to the tunnel walls, allowing the L line to remain open.
Officials at the transit agency, which is run by Gov. Kathy Hochul, did not welcome the interference on the A train plan from her predecessor.
Mark Roche, the deputy chief development officer at the M.T.A., said in a statement that the plans had undergone “internal and external expert review to weigh alternate delivery and construction methods.”
“It was determined that the plan presented is the best option for getting this work done as quickly as possible, with the least impact to commuters,” Mr. Roche said in a statement.
Transit officials noted that the A train project was different from the L train rehabilitation work in 2019. The L train project involved repairing damage to cables and other infrastructure inside the tunnel that runs under the East River. The A train project is more complex and involves fixing structural flaws on an aging bridge and viaducts.
It was another signal that Mr. Cuomo is looking for a way back into politics and could soon enter the mayoral primary next June, with the list of challengers to Mayor Eric Adams growing since his indictment on federal corruption charges in September.
Mr. Cuomo has increasingly been wading into city issues and recently changed his voter registration to a Manhattan address from Westchester County. He also wrote an opinion piece last week arguing for competence in government and pointed to his embrace of infrastructure projects.
Mr. Cuomo was governor for a decade before resigning in 2021 amid a wave of sexual harassment allegations. (He denies them.) A House subcommittee recently referred Mr. Cuomo to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, accusing him of lying to Congress about his involvement in a state Covid report on nursing home deaths.
Transit officials had announced that A trains will not run south of the Howard Beach-JFK Airport stop from mid-January until May. The Rockaway Park Shuttle will also be closed at the Broad Channel stop. Free shuttle buses will run along the route during the shutdown.
Mr. Adams defended the decision at his weekly news conference and said that transit officials did not make hard choices like this one “to be cruel.” The mayor said the city would examine the idea of adding more trips on NYC Ferry’s route to the Rockaways.
“The M.T.A. is making this call,” he said. “I support the call they’re making.”
Mr. Cuomo’s position puts him at odds with Mr. Roche, a former ally who worked on several of Mr. Cuomo’s priorities, including the L train rehabilitation and the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
Mr. Cuomo’s decision to call off the L train shutdown was popular among many riders. But there was a strenuous debate among transit experts over whether it was the right call. The subway’s then-leader, Andy Byford, called for an independent review of Mr. Cuomo’s plan, leading to tension between the two men.
The governor’s personal reluctance to ride the subway was memorably lampooned by in 2015, when a riders’ group carried around a cardboard likeness of Mr. Cuomo onto subway cars and created an Instagram account, @ridecuomoride.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for that group, the Riders Alliance, criticized Mr. Cuomo for canceling the L train project “at the 11th hour” and for removing his support for congestion pricing, a tolling plan to raise money for the transit system.
“The burden is on Cuomo to prove he knows what he’s talking about, now that he’s out of office,” he said.
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