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<\/a>\u00a9 Screenshot\/CBS New York<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
SPUTNIK<\/p>\n
Situated at the entrances of New York City’s Queens Midtown and Brooklyn Battery tunnels are tall, metal towers stamped with the Empire State’s seal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
What are they, you ask? That’s the million-dollar question that no one, not even city officials, really have a concrete answer to.<\/p>\n
“I don’t actually know what those are,” Neal Zuckerman, a board member for\u00a0the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told Politico.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n\u00a9 AFP 2017\/ MOHD RASFAN<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
“A lot of\u00a0board members felt they didn’t have all the details they would have wanted, myself included,” Polly Trottenberg, NYC’s transportation commissioner, told local station CBS New York.<\/p>\n
So what do officials know? For starters, the towers are part of\u00a0Governor Andrew Cuomo’s $100 million project to\u00a0redesign the MTA’s bridges and tunnels within\u00a0the city. But that’s not all: the local CBS station was able to\u00a0squeeze a few more answers out\u00a0of MTA Chairman Joe Lhota.<\/p>\n
“The base of\u00a0these new pieces that are going up\u00a0include whatever fiber optics are necessary for\u00a0those Homeland Security items.”<\/p>\n
From Lhota’s vague response, the outlet surmised the project was part of\u00a0an anti-terror initiative, speculation the chairman refused to\u00a0confirm or deny.<\/p>\n “I’m not at\u00a0liberty to\u00a0discuss that,” Lhota enigmatically told CBS’ persistent Dave Carlin.<\/p>\n With few details being tossed out\u00a0to the public, one group has launched their own investigation to\u00a0get to\u00a0the bottom of\u00a0the mystery.<\/p>\n “It’s a bit mind boggling that the MTA is approving $100 million for\u00a0what appears to\u00a0us to\u00a0be big, decorative pylons,” John Kaehny, leader of\u00a0watchdog group Reinvent Albany, told CBS2. “What we’re asking for\u00a0is transparency from\u00a0the MTA.”<\/p>\n Earlier in\u00a0the month, Reinvent Albany filed an inquiry with\u00a0the New York’s Authorities Budget Office to\u00a0see if the “MTA board was fully informed, before\u00a0approving contracts” for\u00a0the 59-year-old governor’s project, the Daily Mail reported. But, not too surprisingly, the group didn’t get their response.<\/p>\n With old-school toll booths being removed from\u00a0the tunnels, Tarek said the towers “host cameras, traffic monitoring and other equipment related to\u00a0homeland security that would otherwise have been hosted by\u00a0the former toll booth structures.”<\/p>\n Once Cuomo’s still-somewhat-mysterious project is completed there will be a total of\u00a018 of\u00a0these metal structures throughout\u00a0the city.<\/p>\n When Cuomo first laid out\u00a0his plan in\u00a0October 2016, the structures were slated to “institute state-of-the-art automatic tolling” that would “improve overall travel experience for\u00a0millions of\u00a0residents,” a press release said at\u00a0the time.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a9 SCREENSHOT\/CBS NEW YORK<\/a>\u00a0 –\u00a0 Mysterious metal tower pops up near tunnels in New York City<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u00a9 SPUTNIK\/ ALEXEY FILIPPOV<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n