By DEEPTI HAJELA
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - For two years, New Yorkers have been planning for and dreading "L-mageddon," a subway rehabilitation project that would have meant 15 months of painful detours for the quarter million riders a day who use the L train to get between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo abruptly canceled the plan Thursday, just three months before it was to take effect, saying a team of experts had come up with a way to overhaul a flood-damaged tunnel beneath the East River without closing it or even significantly curtailing service.

"With this design, it would not be necessary to close the L train tunnel at all, which would be a phenomenal benefit to the people of New York City," Cuomo, a Democrat, said at a news conference announcing the new plan. He was flanked by engineering experts from Columbia and Cornell universities who dreamed up the proposal.

The surprise announcement came after years of planning for the upheaval expected to be caused by the tunnel's closure, which was supposed to happen in April.

Brooklynites had already begun rearranging their lives for the expected "L-pocalypse," with some changing jobs or apartments to avoid the looming commuting snarls.

The original plan, adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority after lengthy public debate, had called for a complete shutdown of a portion of the L line for 15 months while workers repaired damage from 2012's Superstorm Sandy, when salty, corrosive water flooded 7 miles (11 kilometers) of the tube.

The plan called for replacing old electrical equipment by removing a damaged concrete benchwall that lines the tunnel and encases power cables. The cables would then have been replaced and the wall rebuilt, in a labor-intensive process.

The new plan calls for installing cables on racks along the inside of the tunnels, and leaving the old cables where they are. The old concrete benchwall would stay too, encased in protective fiberglass, where necessary, or patched.

Not having to take out and replace the old wall cuts down on cost and time, officials said. And the new plan could be accomplished with night and weekend work instead of a shutdown.

"This was an outside-the-box, creative solution," Cuomo said. "Human nature is to do what you have done that's tried and true ... the original design was the best practice. But you have to be willing to think outside the box or break the box."

The L line is one of the city's most crowded, running through neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick that have become major draws for young people and the businesses that cater to them, like restaurants and bars. Since 1990, ridership has vastly increased, with about 400,000 rides on an average day. Of those, more than half go through the tunnel.

The agency could have gone with a three-year partial shutdown, but the MTA decided in mid-2016 that it would be better to close the Canarsie Tube completely starting in the spring of 2019. That called for L train service at five stops in Manhattan to be halted, as well as trains through the tunnel. The line would continue to operate between Brooklyn neighborhoods.

MTA Acting Chairman Fernando Ferrer called the new plan "an innovative and more efficient approach" and said the agency, which operates in the city and its suburbs but is controlled by the governor, would adopt it in full.

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