This just breaking from The Brooklyn Paper:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move to shut off the city’s subway system overnight on Monday ahead of an anticipated blizzard came as a surprise to transit workers and runs against common sense, because the trains need to move as part of keeping the tracks clear and will be running all night anyway, according to a transit insider. The governor’s 6 pm announcement that subway and bus service would be halted completely at 11 pm blindsided the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Incident Command Center, where workers first heard about it on the news, said the source, who lacks authorization to speak about internal matters and asked to remain anonymous.
The halting of subway service is the first ever for a snowstorm. It is ill-considered because an actual turning-off of the entire system requires moving all the cars to far-flung facilities for storage, as the agency did during Hurricane Sandy, when flooding was a concern, and rebooting from that takes ages, the insider said. Emergency personnel will be riding the trains overnight while no one else is allowed to, per the source. The closure will strand people and put lives at risk, not because the subways can’t run, but because Cuomo wants to look good, the source said.
Here's the link to the full article, which is a very good read, and honestly, not surprising if true. Given our history during past blizzards and Hurricane Sandy, everything in the article regarding protection of subway assets rings true.
Governor Cuomo has been all over the news all day, dour-faced and threatening, promising to slap people with misdemeanors and fines of $300 for breaking the travel ban tonight. I listened to every other governor and mayor on the east coast announce a similar policy today -- firmly but paternalistically. Cuomo's delivery struck me as politcally-driven, and now it seems that it was not just the tone, but a portion of the policy itself that was motivated by politics.
Let's see if this gets picked up by anyone in coming days. I'm eager to see what our friends at The Albany Project uncover as well.