NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: Cuomo Under Federal Investigation, Memorial Day Travel Delays, and East River Tunnel Construction

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

The Associated Press is reporting that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is under federal investigation for allegedly lying to Congress about his administration's pandemic response. Meanwhile, Memorial Day weekend travel is expected to cause major delays on roads and at airports across the region. Also, the Knicks will try to even their series against the Indiana Pacers tonight at Madison Square Garden in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Plus, this week’s transit updates include Amtrak construction on the first of its two East River tunnels, a proposed 34th Street busway, and Mayor Adams’ $400 million plan to redesign part of Fifth Avenue.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, May 23rd. Here's the morning headlines. I'm Jene Pierre. The Associated Press is reporting that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is under federal investigation for allegedly lying to Congress last year. The AP is citing an anonymous source in its report. And at question is whether Cuomo intentionally misled lawmakers in testimony. to Congress. To prove he committed a crime, prosecutors will have to show Cuomo's statements about a report on his office's pandemic response influenced a congressional investigation. Former federal prosecutor John Fishwick of Virginia says that result is possible. I think they will be able to get

over the hurdle that this is a material fact. It's not something minor. Other legal experts suggest the investigation is instead politically motivated by the Trump Justice Department. A spokesperson for Cuomo is denying wrongdoing. Cuomo is currently running for New York City Mayor. Memorial Day weekend is time for cookouts, vacation, and, well, lots of traffic. Delays are expected on all roadways coming in and out of New York City. Every airport in the region is expecting long lines all weekend, especially since you'll need a real ID if you're trying to use state-issued identification to fly. And don't forget Newark Airport's recent staffing and equipment meltdowns. Transit engineer and former traffic Commissioner Gridlock Sam Swartz says whatever day you hit the road, make it an early departure.

This Memorial Day looks like it'll be the heaviest, perhaps, in decades. If you're planning to travel, my suggestion is the mornings are always going to be easier. AAA says the worst trip of the weekend will be from the Jersey Shore back into the city on Monday afternoon, which is estimated to take more than two hours and 40 minutes. The New York DMV is warning drivers about a text fishing scam asking customers to pay outstanding easy pass fines. Officials say the DMV and EasyPass would never send text asking for personal information. You can avoid the scam by keeping an eye out for poor grammar or use of threats and be careful about clicking links and text messages sent from unknown numbers.

The Knicks will try to tie things up tonight at Madison Square Garden in their best of seven series against the Indiana Pacers. WMYC's Sean Carlson has to do. more. It's rare to see Knicks fans as optimistic as they were earlier this week. New York made its first Eastern Conference finals in a quarter century after knocking out the defending champion Boston Celtics, and the Knicks had the lead in game one Wednesday night, but the Guard and Faithful were silenced when Pacers guard Tyrese Halliburton hit a game-tying shot at the buzzer in the fourth quarter. The Pacers went on to beat the Knicks in overtime. Halliburton even imitated the infamous choke gesture that former pacer and current TV analyst Reggie Miller made in the 90s to much controversy.

If the Knicks lose tonight, the series will shift to Indy with the Knicks in a two-nothing hole. It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On the Way, covering all things transportation. That's after the break. On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. It's time for On the Way, our weekly segment on all things considered, breaking down the week's transit news. joining us is WNYC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and Ramsey Caliphay and editor Clayton Gouza. Okay, Amtrak is planning to start construction on the first of its two East River tunnels. The work has been years in the making, but it's been controversial. The MT& Amtrak have been feuding over this surprise, surprise.

What's the latest? Quick reminder. This is about two of four tunnels that run from Queens to Penn Station. They're used by Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad, and NJ Transit. They were damaged by Hurricane Sandy. and Amtrak will shut one tunnel at a time for major repairs of the hole of the tunnel. The MTA, Governor Hockel, even Republican lawmakers were begging Amtrak to not shut down one tunnel at a time. They were concerned that if there's any mishap or problems, the other three tunnels could see major delays.

They want Amtrak to scale down the scope of the work, just do it on nights and weekends. But today, we have final confirmation that Amtrak will not be doing that. It's been moving ahead with the repairs, just as they planned. And Hockel said in a statement today that Amtrak agreed to do extra inspections and add crews to help prevent any problems. She said they also agreed to hire a third-party consultant to see if the second tunnel shutdown could be done differently than the first. Right. And so these tunnel shutdowns, one after another, are going to drag on for three years. It's going to reduce the capacity of Amtrak, Long Island Railroad trains between Queens of Manhattan. But really importantly, the MTA is down.

for them to finish this work on time because they're trying to launch their Penn Access project. That's going to bring Metro North Service over the Hellgate Bridge through four new stations in the Bronx into Penn Station for the first time. They're hoping to launch that in about three years within the next three years. And this tunnel work needs to get done in time. They've long had problems infuted with Amtrak over construction work and their shared resources when the MTA was doing at Seaside Access, Grant Central Madison Project. They were arguing with Amtrak constantly about Harold interlocking and the work that they were overseeing with Amtrak there.

I mean, part of the problem is that they don't. There's evidence that Amtrak doesn't really have the construction crews to be able to close and open the tunnels every night. Part of the problem is that Amtrak workers don't really have an incentive to take work placements in New York. One thing is that an Amtrak worker in New York is making the same as an Amtrak worker in, say, Cincinnati. Obviously, it's much cheaper live in Cincinnati. They're less likely to get someone to close the tunnel open it every night. The logistical thing is a big challenge for the thing. the railroad. Okay, next up, New York City's Department of Transportation says they want to add a busway

to 34th Street and restrict all other cars. Ramsey, can you just run us through what the plan is? Yeah, so this new busway, which would only allow buses and trucks and emergency vehicles to drive along the street between 3rd Avenue and 9th avenues will look similar to the 14th Street busway, if you can remember, that launched in 2019. Love it, yeah. Under the new changes, any passenger vehicle that turns onto the street would have to take the next required turn off the street. So they don't want them there. The M-34 bus runs along that cross-town street, and it's actually one of the slowest routes in Manhattan. Also, good thing to know about 34th Street is it connects to 16 different subway stations and also to Penn Station with many of the commuter railroad services.

So city officials are actually pointing to 14th Street and saying, hey, since the busway launched, bus speeds have improved dramatically on 14th. So not only would there be bus exclusive lanes in the plan, the duty says they'll also redesign street crossings so that they're shorter and brighter to see for pedestrians. So like Clayton knows, though, he can tell you about how these proposals actually come with a lot of pushback in the city. We might remember a year or two ago,

the city and the DOT plan to do one, a similar idea on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Yeah. That got a lot of pushback from Fordham University, Bronx Zoo, other institutions, they scale back that plan. They did launch one about five years ago, four or five years ago,

kind of in the aftermath of the pandemic and Main Street and downtown Flushing, Queens, after business groups pushed back there, They scaled back the hours of it. So you can almost certainly expect this 34th Street plan to draw some controversy. But because it's so close, like a mile away from the 14th Street one, it's really easy for the city to point to 14th Street and say, wouldn't you like to see the same thing on 34th Street?

And that's one of the slowest buses in the city and also one of the busiest ones because it connects to all these subway lines, Ramsey mentioned. But it also could be kind of this pivotal moment for Mayor Adams on Transportation. He wants to get this done by the end of the year. He's at a shaky record on bus lanes, upset a lot of transit advocates. So this could be a landmark thing for his DOT. You know, speaking of landmark things, the mayor had an announcement of his own. He's allocating about $400 million in public money to fully redesign part of Fifth Avenue in Midtown.

What's up at that? This is a stretch from Bryant Park to Central Park, and it's been under discussion since de Blasio was mayor. De Blasio proposed a busway on that route, as well as a protected bike lane. and more planters. That plan was met with opposition from businesses on Fifth Avenue and swiftly abandoned. Now Adams claims to have found some common ground between the businesses and the city and is backing a pretty major overhaul of the avenue. He wants to create a pedestrian boulevard that rivals our European counterparts. He envisions a tree-line canopy. He wants to double the sidewalk space, but unlike the Grand Boulevard in France or Spain, he isn't ready to remove traffic entirely.

He will reduce the traffic lanes from five to three, but he isn't creating a bus-only route, and there's no effort to add any bike lanes at all. But $400 million seems like a lot for just removing a lane of traffic and building a sidewalk, no? Well, in fact, it's actually $422 million, to be precise. And the bulk of that money is for actually updating the underground infrastructure, replacing the sewer mains, relocating utilities. You know, if the city wants to put massive planters and new trees, it can't block access that Con Edison and the DEP would need later.

So they have to relocate a lot of utilities. And those are the kind of upgrades that can only be done also because they're ripping up the street anyway. Oh, and by the way, none of this work is actually going to start until 2028. And by then we could have a new mayor with new priorities. And the city council also has to approve this funding plan. And they haven't done that either. Well, why in that section?

And not say the part of it that runs like right along Central Park. I can picture a beautiful Sean-I-Lizé-style boulevard there. Yeah, I mean, the easiest way to answer that is because there's no commercial businesses on one side of Central Park. They're the ones pushing this farther down fit. And obviously, there's a lot of luxury.

Buildings over there. Also, interestingly, Trump Tower sits right in this stretch. Ah, ooh-l-la. All right, it's also Fleet Week this week where thousands of Navy sailors and Marines dock into New York's harbors. It comes just a few days after that Mexican Navy-Tal ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge. Ramsey, it seems like the incident has clouded over the festivity so far.

Tell us what has been like so far this week. Yeah, it was a somber mood among the sailors. It was also raining yesterday when all the Navy ships came in along the harbor. Mayor Adams hosted a vigil for the first night of Fleet Week for the crew members of the Quatamuk who lost their lives. And on Sunday at St. Patrick's Cathedral, there's going to be a mass for Fleet Week, but also many of those crew members who are still in New York are going to pay a visit.

I spoke with some sailors during the kickoff ceremony of Fleet Week, and they offered their condolences, obviously, to their fellow mariners. Here's Lieutenant Jonathan Hill. He's a U.S. Navy ceremonial guard. He actually worked with the Mexican Navy when he was stationed on the USS Omaha in San Diego. When we meet up with other countries that basically do the same job, we do to speak a different language, it's easy to find common ground in what we're doing on a day-to-day basis. You know, I spoke with many other sailors who had similar sentiments,

but most of them are still hoping that they can enjoy the rest of this week's fit. festivities. And while this is happening, we're still waiting to get more information about what exactly happened last weekend. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board last said they're still waiting to interview the captain and the crew members of the ship to figure out what specifically went on. And what they've said so far is that they believe there was a mechanical failure and that the boat traveled backwards before accelerating towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Right. And it's just a reminder. One of the best ways to honor those deaths is just to celebrate food week earnestly. Everyone loves it when the sailors come to town. It's a story

tradition in New York. Everyone loves a man in uniform, especially one that's precisely pressed, crispy white, crease to perfection, buy a sailor a drink, hang out with them, take them around town, enjoy a fleeting moment during Fleet Week. It might be your last chance to truly feel something until next year. I can't believe we're going out on this. Thanks to tell me to the

editor Clayton Gouza and Transportation Reporters Ramsey Caliphate and Stevenesson. You can stay in the know in all things transit or ask a question over your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com Slash on the way, my friends. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sean. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a date for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast. NYC.