[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly called off the L train shutdown, he upended years of careful planning to ensure that 275,000 displaced riders were not left stranded in an L-pocalypse.

Now, even as officials forge ahead with a widely debated alternate plan, many transit advocates are calling for those contingency measures — more bus and ferry service, new bike lanes, traffic restrictions — to be put in place even with no shutdown. The planned changes, they say, are still needed in a growing city facing critical transportation challenges from congestion to a broken subway system.

Why turn back, they say, when so much of the groundwork is done. Bike routes have been expanded. Bus lanes have been painted, and the skeletons of bus fare machines have been installed on sidewalks. New bus and ferry services have been announced.

“What we have in front of us is a city that has to expand our transportation system,” said Ydanis Rodriguez, the chairman of the City Council’s transportation committee. “We have an opportunity to become the most pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly city in the whole nation.”