Gov: New York City travel ban likely to be lifted by morning

The storm was the second-biggest in NY history, with 26.8 inches (68 cm) of snow in Central Park by midnight on Saturday, just shy of the record 26.9 inches set in 2006, the National Weather Service said.

The governor said 19 people were killed in the snow storm, 5 of them in NY.

A travel ban in place for local and state roads on Long Island and in the New York City will be lifted at 7 a.m. Sunday, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

MTA bus services and Metro north lines will be back up and running this afternoon.

“Many of the railroad’s yards are still buried in more than two feet of snow”, he said in a statement.

Cuomo said, “The travel ban issued earlier today allowed emergency teams to make significant progress in clearing the roads”.

The governor will provide another update tonight around 6 p.m.

Limited buses will be making all local stops on restored routes, and 40-foot buses will replace 3-door buses on all Select Bus Service (SBS) routes.

Cuomo says New Yorkers should stay inside Saturday and avoid driving.

The trans-Hudson crossings that continue to be closed until 7:00 a.m. tomorrow are: the George Washington Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel, Bayonne Bridge, Goethals Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing.

As of this morning, approximately 85 percent of flights had been canceled at LaGuardia, while the number at JFK was more than 50 percent, Cuomo said.

A travel ban keeping non-emergency workers off the roads was lifted early Sunday.

He says there are no plans to shut down mass transit but service may be curtailed. A violation of the travel ban is punishable as misdemeanor that includes fines of up to $300.

On the New Jersey shore, a region hard-hit in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy, the storm drove flooding high tides.