Rumors swirled Tuesday following a weekend social media post in which former Boston Globe reporter Frank Phillips cited a “solid source” and said Davey was in line to be head of Massachusetts’ port authority.

If true, Davey’s departure would come after just two years on the job running the city’s trains and buses, and make him the fourth NYCT transit leader to leave in just over four years.

But Davey — who came to New York from the small town on the Charles River where he worked as a consultant, was the Massachusetts secretary of transportation and once chaired the board of the port authority — denied the rumors Tuesday.

“Not true,” he said at a press conference in Queens.

“I am lucky enough to have this job which I enjoy very much,” he added. “I do get calls from time to time, because I’ve got a great team that makes me look good.”

“When you retire,” he told the transit press corps, “get better sources.”

Transit sources Tuesday said no official word had been given as to whether Davey planned to leave, but multiple people in and around the MTA said they assumed there was truth behind the rumor.

Sources described the vibe at MTA headquarters as uncertain.

Davey came to NYC Transit in 2022, replacing Craig Cipriano, who helmed the agency in an interim capacity.  Cipriano held the role for several months following the departure of Sarah Feinberg, who took the job as an interim leader in February 2020 after the resignation of Andy Byford.

Massport — the Massachusetts port authority which runs Logan Airport, several smaller airports and the state’s seaports — is currently looking for new leadership following the departure of Executive Director Lisa Wieland last fall.

The authority’s board is expected to meet Thursday, with an information item on the agenda regarding its CEO search.

Massport spokeswoman Jennifer Mehigan told the Daily News that she could not confirm whether Davey was in the running.

“The work of the preliminary screening committee is ongoing,” she said. “They have not yet deliberated or determined finalists.

“It is anticipated the committee will make a recommendation of finalists to the full Massport Board on Thursday,” she added.

Asked if the board would be discussing him, Davey demurred.

“I chaired the board 10 years ago — I can tell you what they did 10 years ago,” he said. “I do not know what they’re doing this week, last week or next month.”

“We have the largest bus fleet in America, what with 6,000 buses,” NYC Transit President Richard Davey said Tuesday, standing before the two new buses in the garage of the Grand Ave. depot in Maspeth.

“We will be transitioning over the coming years to make sure every bus is zero emission across the city,” he said.

The 60 buses were ordered for $64 million in 2021 from manufacturer New Venture — a bill footed by federal dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, transit officials said.

The buses feature regenerative braking and are expected to get between 80-90 miles of range on a charge in typical local service.

The first of the buses, including the pair unveiled Tuesday, will operate on local routes out of the Grand Ave. depot, which is also home to 17 new pantograph chargers. The chargers, which lower a power connection to the roof of parked buses, are meant to ease the logistics of fleetwide charging.

Another 46 such chargers are planned in the coming months for depots around the city, and an on-street charger is being built for MTA buses at the Williamsburg Bridge bus terminal at the span’s Brooklyn side.

The chargers can top a bus off from empty in six hours, said Frank Annicaro, transit’s bus boss.

The 60-bus order consists entirely of 40-foot buses intended for local routes. Sixteen of those buses are slated to go to the Grand Ave. depot, the home base of the B24, B32, B39, B47, B48, B57, B60, B62, and Q59 routes.

A dozen of the new buses will operate out of the Charleston depot on Staten Island, 10 buses will go to the Michael J. Quill depot in Manhattan, and the remaining 22 will be based out of the East New York depot.

MTA brass hope to have a fully electric bus fleet by 2040.

The transit agency put in another order to New Venture last year, buying 205 battery-powered buses for $286 million.

The bulk of that order consists of 187 40-foot electric buses for local service, to be bought for $1.3 million apiece.

Though MTA leadership has expressed reservations over the reliability of the currently available electric articulated buses, 18 of the buses ordered last year are articulated 60-footers. Articulated buses are mainstays of the MTA’s express Select Bus Service routes, including those that run on major crosstown Manhattan streets.

The coming articulated buses will cost the MTA $2.1 million apiece.

In addition to the two buses unveiled Tuesday, the MTA currently runs 15 electric articulated buses out of the Michael J. Quill bus depot in west Midtown.

The DOT workers are set to pick up where they left off last year, wrapping up work started at the north end of the street near the Pulaski Bridge.

DOT officials said the work would include new pedestrian islands, a new crossing at Freeman St. and signal upgrades, as well as visibility improvements and increased speed-limit enforcement.

The agency is also in the process of analyzing traffic data collected along the boulevard over the winter.

That data will be used to measure the efficacy of the current measures before making a plan for the southern portion of McGuinness, a DOT spokesman said.

“Traffic safety is a key priority for Mayor Adams, and we are delivering a redesign of McGuinness Blvd. that will make this corridor safer for everyone,” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement.

“Too many New Yorkers have been injured or lost their lives on McGuinness Blvd., and working with the community we will continue to make significant safety improvements,” he said.

McGuinness Blvd. was initially slated for a more comprehensive redesign, spurred by the 2021 hit-and-run killing of beloved Brooklyn teacher Matthew Jensen.

That plan, which would have removed two car lanes from the four-lane road and replaced them with protected bike lanes while maintaining street parking, got the kibosh from Adams last July.

City Councilman Lincoln Restler, whose district includes the whole of McGuinness Blvd., has said the current compromise falls short of the mark.

In an interview on NY1 Sunday, Restler was asked if the work done so far had yielded any improvements.

“Not a significant improvement, no,” he said.

“What we’ve demanded … is to reduce a lane of traffic in each direction, so that we can stop the violence that we see on McGuinness Blvd.,” Restler continued. “This is not about adding bike lanes. This is about reducing the amount of cars and trucks that are speeding through our community.”

The Portal North Bridge, which will carry two tracks of Amtrak and NJ Transit traffic over the Hackensack River as well as 2 miles of New Jersey swamp, will replace a 114-year-old swing bridge known for causing delays on the Northeast Corridor.

“[William] Howard Taft sat in the White House when this bridge was built,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) told reporters in Kearny, N.J., on Monday, referencing the current Portal Bridge. “The New York Giants played baseball at the Polo Grounds.”

The sweeping Gateway project seeks to run two new tracks under the Hudson River and into Penn Station — with the goal of allowing repairs to the existing North River tunnels and eventually doubling the number of trains that can enter Penn Station.

“This is not a 20-year project, this is a once-in-a-century project,” said NJ Transit President Kevin Corbett. “The girders are now mostly in place — it’s looking like a bridge.”

The project also calls for an extensive overhaul of the lines through New Jersey’s Meadowlands, the semitamed marshland along the Hackensack and Passaic rivers.

The Portal North Bridge and its partner, the eventual Portal South Bridge — which will run along the existing swing bridge’s right-of-way — are the crown jewels of the effort to double train traffic across the swamp.

But even by itself, the Portal North Bridge is expected to alleviate train delays and speed up rail travel between northern New Jersey and Manhattan with updated signals and rails, and by being tall enough for marine traffic to pass under.

“Fifty percent is a pretty remarkable accomplishment on any project because it sort of means you’ve gotten to the top of it and now you’re on the descent, landing,” said Anthony Coscia, chairman of Amtrak’s board.

“When you think of the idea of 12 million pounds of steel, 50,000 cubic yards of concrete — there are 400 workers here on a daily basis, working,” he added.

“There aren’t superlatives that I could provide that would adequately capture the difference it’s going to make in people’s lives when we build this megaproject.”

When complete, the project will “create the kind of modern four-track system that exists in most parts of the world, but doesn’t exist here,” said Coscia.

But that four-track system is a long way off.

The Portal North Bridge — expected to open in 2026 — will carry two tracks, allowing the current bridge to be demolished and eventually replaced with the two-track Portal South Bridge — a project for which no contracts have been issued and no time line set.

Work to prepare the riverbed for the Hudson River tunnel into Penn Station began this year. But that work of shoring up the ground ahead of tunnel boring isn’t expected to wrap up before 2027.

Even when the Hudson River tunnel is complete, four-track operation will rely on the repair of the 1910 North River Tunnels that currently connect New Jersey to Penn Station, aging  infrastructure officials say still bears damage from Superstorm Sandy.

The Gateway project, which also includes the digging of a link under Jersey City and Hoboken, N.J., to connect the Meadowlands to the Hudson River tubes, is estimated to cost at least $40 billion total.

A report last week by Amtrak’s inspector general confirmed the federal railroad’s assessment that the North Portal Bridge project is on schedule and on budget.

The report warned that Amtrak and NJ Transit needed better interagency communication, and that Amtrak’s staffing of the project had at times been insufficient.

The existing right-of-way across the Hackensack River will eventually be repurposed as the South Portal Bridge. (Evan Simko-Bednarski)Coscia said that his railroad took no issue with the report’s conclusion and would work to meet the inspector general’s recommendations.

Corbett, the NJ Transit head, brushed the assessment aside.

“We got this far,” he said. “I have no doubt that the team — the collective team, the Amtrak and the [NJ] Transit team, will deliver this.”

A report by advocates Riders Alliance with Vocal-NY said plans to widen portions of six city highways highways stand in opposition to the state’s climate goals — most notably the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act as well as the state’s effort to reduce traffic in New York City via congestion pricing.

“Expanding roads in New York City and northwest of the city as planned flagrantly violates our climate law, locking in more transportation emissions rather than cutting them,” the report reads.

The projects include state efforts to widen the Van Wyck, the Bruckner, and the Cross-Bronx Expressway, MTA plans on the Belt Parkway and the FDR drive, and the city’s plan for its’ portion of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

In Queens, the state is allocating $1.22 billion towards expanding the capacity of the Van Wyck Expressway, an effort to increase both passenger and freight capacity on the major road leading to Kennedy Airport.

Advocates said the plan amounted to “encouraging more travelers to drive or be driven to the airport.”

In the Bronx, a mile of the Bruckner Expressway is set to be widened along with a slew of exit ramps — a $1.7 billion project the advocates said will increase air pollution in the South Bronx.

Despite a stated goal of keeping trucks off surface streets on their way to the Hunts Point market, the report’s authors said the project would create more room for vehicular traffic overall, encouraging more automobile use in the borough.

Gov. Hochul’s office estimates the project will take some 13,000 trucks off of local streets.

The market and surrounding neighborhood is also the target of several of the MTA’s congestion pricing pollution mitigations.

The agency has earmarked $15 million to replace the thousand aging diesel refrigeration units at Hunts Point Produce Market with more efficient modern systems, and $20 million towards developing electric truck charging infrastructure.

“While electrifying the market itself and the thousands of trucks that travel to it each day will help improve air quality, the transition will take decades,” the Riders Alliance report reads. “Meanwhile, more highway lanes will bring more traffic congestion and air pollution to the South Bronx.”

A $150 million plan to build a new access road along the Cross-Bronx Expressway also drew ire. Though the state has said it plans on using the road — which initially will serve to circumvent major bridge construction on the interstate — for dedicated busways, no solid plan to run MTA buses on the road yet exists.

Two MTA projects also came under fire from the transit advocates.

One, a plan to widen about 2 miles of the eastbound Belt Parkway where it meets the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, is part of a $1.1 billion package of work to the crossing. The other — a project to revamp the FDR Drive’s connection to the Triborough Bridge — is expected to add a half-mile lane on the highway’s southbound section.

Both projects will add vehicular traffic and pollution to the surrounding communities, advocates said.

MTA officials disagreed.

“Both of these projects are operational improvements that will significantly enhance customer safety, reduce traffic congestion, pollution and benefit local communities including East Harlem, Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton,” said Kayla Shults, a spokesperson for the agency.

Shults said the Verrazzano project also included the addition of 550 trees and 2,000 shrubs to nearby parks.

John Lindsay, a spokesman for Gov. Hochul, said the Van Wyck expansion would create new cycling and pedestrian paths while repairing several bridges along the route, and was not expected to increase the footprint of the highway.

Lindsay dismissed the notion that the widening projects would undercut the state’s emissions goals.

“Governor Hochul has rescued the MTA from the fiscal cliff, advanced congestion pricing, and invested significant resources to protect riders while rapidly expanding the network of EV charging infrastructure to ensure zero emissions vehicles are effectively using our state of the art highways,” he said in a statement. “Governor Hochul will continue New York’s nation-leading efforts to transition to clean transportation and build a cleaner future for the next generation.”

The advocates’ report comes a day before Riders Alliance and Vocal-NY are expected to lobby with transit and environmental advocacy groups in Albany Tuesday.

The groups are lobbying in support of legislation by state Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn) to reduce the number of miles traveled by motor vehicles in New York State by 20% as of 2050.

Paul Ochoa, executive deputy commissioner at DOT, gave the timeline during a budget hearing before the City Council.

“There’s a lot of environmental repairs that are happening right now, [and] there’s interim repairs that are happening right now,” he said.

As for a more comprehensive redesign of the highway, “the current capital timeline of [a] calendar [year] 2028 start is what we’re operating under,” he said.

The triple-cantilever structure, in which northbound and southbound lanes are stacked on top of one another while hugging the edge of Brooklyn Heights, has long been in need of serious repair.

DOT crews have been making structural repairs to the cantilever in recent months.

In April, a portion of the road was closed for a weekend while crews reinforced steel and poured new concrete along a northbound section of the structure.

A portion of the Staten Island-bound side of the road was closed for similar repairs last October, and another round of work is scheduled for June.

DOT officials have used the need for work as an opportunity to “reimagine” the highway. Plans released last year showed the cantilever area covered over with tiered green space.

But the major redesign of the roadway, which sees some 150,000 vehicles a day, has faced multiple delays, and a request for Federal Highway Administration funding was denied earlier this year.

“The Adams administration has made clear the BQE is one of their top priorities,” City Council member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) said Wednesday. “But their budget documents show that no major work is planned until [fiscal year] 2029, at least.”

Ochoa, whom Restler questioned during Wednesday’s hearing, said the $174 million earmarked for the project in the DOT’s current capital plan is sufficient in the meantime.

“That is what we need to continue [repair and environmental work] and lead up to that start date,” Ochoa said.

What triggered that alert remains a mystery to Jersey Shore police, who joined in the search around 3:15 p.m.

“Stafford Township Police, along with Barnegat Township Police and the New Jersey State Police, are currently investigating a distress signal sent to the FAA from an unknown aircraft in a rural area east of Warren Grove,” Stafford Township Police said in a press release Tuesday afternoon.

Law enforcement dispatched a helicopter, forest vehicles and foot units to search for signs of wreckage

Stafford police later said they found no evidence an aircraft had crashed and New Jersey State police have found no signs of a downed plane either. No flights in the area over the Warren Grove area were reported missing or late for arrival.

Police in Barnegat posted on Facebook Tuesday they too received “an unconfirmed report of a crash of a small aircraft in the western portion of our township,” but found no reason for concern.

Initial reports of an emergency alert originated from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst indicating the reception of a single Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) signal in the area of western Barnegat, cops said.

Military officials contacted Atlantic City Airport, where no ELT signal was detected, according to Barnegat police.

The FAA said it would provide further information if it materialized.

“I think we drive too fast in this city,” Mayor Adams told reporters Tuesday. “I do believe, as New Yorkers, we need to slow down.”

The law, colloquially known as “Sammy’s Law,” is named for 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, who was killed by a driver near his home in Brooklyn after chasing a soccer ball into the street in 2013.

The legislation was passed last month as part of the state budget.

It empowers the City Council to lower the base citywide speed limit to 20 mph and allows the city’s Transportation Department to set lower limits on individual streets — as low as 10 mph, depending on the street design.

The lower individual street limits could only be applied to roads with fewer than three lanes, according to the law, and the legislation institutes a 60-day public comment period in advance of any such changes.

Roads of three or more lanes outside of Manhattan would remain at 25 mph, according to the law.

Adams said Tuesday that he appreciated the law’s public comment provisions.

“I like the way this bill is put in place, where the local communities will have [the ability to] weigh in,” he said.

Adams has previously halted street redesign projects — including a bus-route redesign on Fordham Road in the Bronx and traffic calming measures on Underhill Ave. in Brooklyn — citing a perceived lack of community input.

“This has been a long time coming,” Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations, said Tuesday. “We have a Vision Zero goal [of zero traffic fatalities], but we’re not at zero.”

This year is on track to be the city’s deadliest for pedestrians and motorists since the de Blasio-era traffic policies went into effect.

“This is not a problem that goes away on its own, and it doesn’t necessarily go away with education,” Joshi said. “We actually have to redesign our streets and reformulate the laws that apply to people that drive in our city.”

As of Monday, 80 people had been killed on the streets of New York City in traffic incidents so far this year, the highest number to date since 2013.

Of those killed, 36 were pedestrians, 25 were in a car or SUV, 17 were on motorized two-wheeled vehicles, and two were on traditional pedal-powered bicycles.

It was not immediately clear in how many of those deaths officials considered speed a factor.

Neither Adams nor Joshi proposed a target speed limit Tuesday. Joshi said the proposed speed limits would be based on “a deep dive of DOT looking at the data that we have, looking especially at intersections, and [at] what the current street designs are.”

The law is set to go into effect on June 19.

With Michael Gartland and Tim Balk

“This is the new MTA,” Jamie Torres-Springer, head of construction and development for the agency, told the Daily News. “We don’t want to be judged by the standards of 10 years ago.”

Since 2020, Torres-Springer said, the MTA has spent roughly $1 billion less than it expected to pay contractors for capital work.

The new report was a requirement of the 2019 forensic audit of MTA capital spending conducted by accounting firm Crowe LLP. That audit, mandated by the state legislature, found roughly 20% of the MTA’s construction projects from 2014 through 2019 ran over budget.

The firm also said that 8% of the projects in the then-upcoming 2020-2024 capital plan faced similar issues.

The MTA has been able to save in large part because of bundled projects, Torres-Springer said.

The agency’s push to add elevators and other accessibility improvements to subway stations system-wide has taken advantage of bundled contracts, with one firm hired to do the same work across multiple stations.

Most recently, Judlau Contracting was hired to outfit 13 subways stations with accessibility improvements, at a cost of $577 million.

The construction and development boss said such sweeping contracts allowed firms work for less money per station, taking advantage of economies of scale in materials, equipment and subcontracting.

Bundling also allows better coordination, according to Torres-Springer, allowing work to be planned simultaneously to reduce service outages.

Such work is currently ongoing on the No. 7 line, Torres-Springer said.

The construction and development boss also lauded the MTA’s embrace of so-called “design-build” contracting, in which one contract is issued for both design and construction of a given project.

Boosters say the approach allows the people responsible for building a project to have significant input in its design, minimizing unfeasible designs and decreasing the time between pencils on paper and shovels in ground.

Opponents, like Alon Levy, a transportation fellow at NYU’s Marron Institute, say the process amounts to the privatization of mass-transit decisions.

Torres-Springer said the approach isn’t suited for everything the transit agency does. But he credited the approach with shaving time and cost off of the past five years of major work at the MTA.

To date, contracts have been awarded for 46% of the work in the 2020-2024 capital plan. Major work yet to tackle includes the Phase 2 extension of the Second Ave. subway and modern computerized signals on several more subway lines.

The legal challenges to the MTA’s congestion pricing plan have flummoxed efforts to award those contracts.

The MTA’s construction and development department is currently in the process of writing the next five years’ capital plan, due out by the end of 2024.

The MTA’s 20-year-needs assessment, issued last year, is expected to inform the creation of the five-year capital plan due this year.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli issued a report in February estimating at least $43 billion in repair and maintenance costs to the transit system in the next five years.

Mayor Adams announced Monday that downtown Manhattan’s iconic waterfront park will be elevated 5 feet higher as part of the city’s ongoing waterfront resiliency efforts.

“No one has forgotten the devastation of Hurricane Sandy 12 years ago. Every day, we’re in a race against the next superstorm,” Adams said during a groundbreaking at the park. “We have to build a safer, stronger and more sustainable city.”

The new construction project aims to rebuild and raise the Battery’s wharf promenade at the tip of Manhattan to protect against storm-surge flooding and rising sea levels caused by climate change. It’s expected to be complete by 2026.

City officials estimate that, when finished, the upgrade will help protect 100,000 residents and 12,000 businesses.

It’s one of several public works projects underway in lower Manhattan to protect against the sort of flooding that gripped the city when Superstorm Sandy paralyzed downtown in 2012.

As part of that broader effort, which is projected to cost a total of $1.7 billion, the city completed work on a 45-ton storm gate on the Lower East Side in 2022 and is continuing to construct storm walls along the East River. Those walls are also expected to be finished in 2026, according to city Environmental Protection Commissioner  Rohit Aggarwala.

Aggarwala said Monday that aside from improving resiliency on Manhattan’s southernmost tip, the Battery project will get much of its construction materials delivered by boat, which will limit the need for trucks to make deliveries and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions tied to the job.

“A lot of the material here is being reused on site. We’ve got special equipment that protects from noise and air pollution,” he said. “And a lot of the material was brought here by water rather than by truck, reducing the overall impact of this construction project on the city and on the environment.”