New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday that the city’s command structure for dealing with disasters was “backward” and proposed a single line of authority with the New York Police Department in command.

The airports, bridges, tunnels, ports and railways leading into the city are now managed by a web of different transit and law enforcement agencies, including the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Port Authority Police Department.

The mayor said the NYPD is ”the agency generally recognized as the most sophisticated counterterrorism force in the world,” and should be calling the shots if a catastrophe strikes any of those targets.

”This would allow for a singular and accountable response to disasters and avoid any confusion that may result from multiple commands responding to the same event,” he said. — Associated Press

Needless to say, the Port Authority is not at all happy about this. The MTA seemed more open, but New York City has a long history of interagency clashes, so this sort of overhaul will prove difficult to pull off.

New Yorkers would also be able to sign up to receive text messages from the city on their mobile phones in the event of an emergency or disaster. London implemented such a system from the 31st August, and the system will eventually be expanded to all of Great Britain.

In other news, the New York MTA declined money for bomb-sniffing dogs in the subways, citing restrictions they called cumbersome and which would have sent the dogs away in the event of a national emergency.