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Members of the City Council’s Transportation Committee tried to figure out why normal preparatory work on large parts of the system was not done.

Hundreds of city buses were stranded and subway trains were stuck dead on their tracks for hours – some with passengers on board.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said they were lured into a false sense of security when weather forecasts from three days before the storm predicted between one to three inches of snow.

"Once we knew that a blizzard was upon us, we should have formally notified and made the decision to go to a Plan 4, which we did not do for almost 19 hours," said City Transit President Thomas Prendergast.

Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca pointed out that some of the problems were caused by the magnitude of the storm, but that others were a direct result of lack of planning and using few resources.

"The facts are damning,” said Vacca. “We know that the MTA, despite widespread reports of an approaching blizzard, did not activate its snow emergency plan until many hours after the storm hit, when it was too late to make the difference that it really would have made.”

“I sit here more worried about the future of the mass transit system to deal with a snowstorm that I was during the snowstorm,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Transit officials are implementing changes in the wake of the storm, including a blizzard plan, part of which was utilized during this week's smaller storm. They also said they needed to improve communications, including how they interact with city agencies.

Union leaders claim the blizzard response was botched because the MTA did not want to pay overtime costs, but the MTA disputed those charges.

"Never in the history of the Transit Authority, in the time I've been there, has there ever been a decision made with respect to an emergency, collision, derailment, fire, flood or snowstorm to hold back resources, to not expend money," said Prendergast.

The meeting was rough going from the start, when Prendergast and other transit officials were chastised for not preparing written testimony for the hearing.

"That's outrageous and disrespectful," said Quinn to the transit officials. "And I appreciate all of the other work that was going on, but quite frankly, a deputy mayor, a fire commissioner, a sanitation commissioner, the Office of Emergency Management commissioner, they were all able to prepare testimony and they faced the same challenges that you did. The only difference was you had more time."

Earlier this week, a City Council hearing was held on the city’s overall response to the storm.

The City Council is also planning to hold public hearings on the blizzard in each borough to allow New Yorkers to give their feedback on the city's response to the blizzard.