Joseph Lhota on Fixing New York City Transit After Sandy

We thought originally that Sandy was going to arrive between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday. It takes 12 hours to shut the transit system down, so we stopped it Sunday evening. Could we have gotten everybody into work on Monday? Yes, but we wouldn’t have had a chance to get them home. I had to take that into account. There was some grumbling on Twitter about that decision—New Yorkers are very demanding, and they want all their services regardless of the weather.

The surge was far beyond anything I had expected. My worst-case scenario was exceeded in three minutes. The water from the Hudson River rushed into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel at such a fast pace that there were whitewater rapids. The noise was disorienting. I immediately went back to the office and made everyone aware of what I saw.