Cuomo’s tunnel tour will snarl L line

As if the looming shutdown isn’t bad enough, Gov. Cuomo will cause a headache for L-train riders in the wee hours Friday — forcing the MTA to slow service on the line so that he and his experts can decide if repair work really needs to take 15 months.

“The governor will be undertaking a tour of the Lline tunnel tomorrow night in conjunction with some expert team that he’s brought in, but also in conjunction with our expert team so we can show them what the specifics are of the tunnel and particularly the challenges we face with such a confined tunnel and quite substantial damage,” New York City Transit President Andy Byford said at Wednesday’s MTA board meeting.

“We look forward to setting forth exactly why we have the scope of work that we do and . . . the reasons why that then drives the time frame.”

Cuomo suddenly announced Monday, after years of studies by the MTA’s own experts and just four months before the work is set to begin, that he wants to see for himself if the massive shutdown, which is set to begin in April and disrupt the daily commutes of more than 225,000 straphangers, actually has to happen and take so long.

“I can’t tell you the number of people in Brooklyn who have come up to me and looked me in the eye and said. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else that can be done . . . to shorten this?’ ” Cuomo said on WNYC radio Monday.

Cuomo’s office declined to say who the governor’s experts are.

Byford said at the meeting his team is trying to figure out if it could use one side of the tunnel for the tour and the other for subway traffic. Later, the MTA announced that the tour would happen between midnight and 1:30 a.m. Friday and that only one tunnel would be closed to trains.