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One example is the work done by the leaders of the city’s public transit, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). In advance of Hurricane Irene a year prior, the MTA developed a “storm prep mode,” which it used to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. The evening before Sandy hit, the MTA ordered a system-wide shutdown of the subway system, and subway trains and buses were moved to higher ground to avoid damage from floodwater. Reflecting on this later, MTA chairman Joseph Lhota said:

We sealed as much as we could, and at the same time we wanted to get the rolling stock up to higher ground in the event of a surge of water. . . . At the LIRR [the Long Island Railroad] there were all kinds of preparations. The wind was projected to be 70 miles per hour and at 70 mph those wooden crossing gates will snap. So we took them off or tied them down.47

After the storm passed, the floodwater was pumped out of the subway and all public transportations vehicles were returned to where they belonged and reconnected to their power sources. By November 3, six days after the storm, 80 percent of the subway system was operating again. Without proper planning, the storm could have been a catastrophe for the city’s public transportation, which New Yorkers rely on. As a comparison, Lhota said, “New Jersey lost a lot of locomotives because they didn’t put their rolling stock onto high ground.”48 According to a statement from the New Jersey Transit Corporation after the storm: