Blaz: L of an alternative

SHUTTING DOWN L train service to Manhattan for 18 months is something the MTA needs to reconsider, Mayor de Blasio said Friday.

He’s not convinced service really needs to be shut down while the MTA repairs Hurricane Sandy damage to an underwater tunnel.

“We have to push the MTA to confirm, do they really need to do it that way?” de Blasio said during an interview on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show.” “Are there better alternatives and what are they going to do to maximize the alternatives?”

Before announcing the L train repair work will start in 2019, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and city Department of Transportation brass went to Brooklyn and Manhattan communities to explain the damage the Canarsie Tunnel sustained during the devastating 2012 storm.

The MTA offered those neighborhoods a choice of a three-year partial shutdown with limited service between Manhattan and Brooklyn or the full 18-month closure, with trains running in Brooklyn only.

Transit officials have said they will boost service on nearby train lines and run shuttle buses over the Williamsburg Bridge.

“This decision, although I’m sure it has a practical underlying rationale, announcing it without a plan to deal with the impact is troubling to me,” de Blasio said. “It’s a long time and we’re certainly going to push hard to see, does it really have to be so long? Is there another way to go about this?”

His administration is also mulling the closure of 14th St. to traffic to give buses priority along the L train route.

“It’s a big decision,” de Blasio said. “We’ve only just begun to think about what we might do. It’s not one that, on first blush, sounds to me easy, given how important 14th St. is. But we’ll look at everything and anything we can do.”

MTA spokeswoman Beth DeFalco said the city was well informed in the lead up to the decision and “raised no red flags.”