They’re back!
Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to put the eggheads who cooked up his controversial overhaul of the L train’s Canarsie Tunnel in charge of reviewing all of the MTA’s future major construction projects.
The proposal is buried in the 10-point plan that Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio rolled out Tuesday to fund badly needed construction projects at the governor’s struggling transit authority.
“All major construction projects will be reviewed by construction and engineering experts who are not affiliated with the MTA or its consultants,” the plan says. “The construction review team will be headed by the Deans of Cornell School of Engineering and Columbia School of Engineering to assure state of the art design and technology is being deployed.”
That’s the same group Cuomo brought in to evaluate the MTA’s long-planned shutdown and reconstruction of the Canarsie Tube, who The Post revealed had little experience working on subway systems.
That team of engineers made just one hour-long trip to inspect the tunnel as they worked to come up with their plan, which called for ditching the tunnel’s planned reconstruction and instead repairing it with technology largely untested in subway tunnels.
Cuomo sat center stage at the press conference where Mary Boyce, dean of Columbia’s engineering school, and Lance Collins, dean of Cornell’s engineering school, rolled out their recommendations.
Additionally, Cuomo’s transit novices would be tasked with reviewing the technological underpinnings of subway boss Andy Byford’s plan to overhaul the system’s decrepit signal system by rewiring tunnels with a new computerized system.
It calls on the panel to compare the signaling technology Byford recommends — which is already used by virtually every modern subway system across the globe, including London and Paris — with the experimental system that Cuomo loves to tout, which depends on high-frequency radios to keep track of trains in tunnels.
“This group will also review the plans for signal system upgrade methodology and decide the best system to use, specifically comparing Communications Based Train Control (CBTC) to Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) technology for safety, timeliness and cost,” it says.
The new review comes just two months after Byford hired one of the world’s foremost CBTC experts, Pete Tomlin, away from the London Underground to lead the MTA’s conversion to the technology.
The MTA board’s straphanger advocate slammed Cuomo’s call for yet another review of the subway’s badly needed signaling overhaul.
“We have a world-renowned signaling expert on the property now in Pete Tomlin, I would much rather hear his opinion on signaling,” said Andrew Albert, who sits on the MTA board and heads the New York City Transit Riders Council.
The governor’s office defended the unpaid amateurs.
“They’ve demonstrated with their work on the L train,” said Cuomo spokesman Patrick Muncie. “They are experts with a fresh set of eyes. They brought in innovative ideas that have never been done before.”