If passengers have been stranded for an hour or two, Mr. Prendergast said, advocates will act on their behalf and find ways to rescue them.

“What happened before you had that is someone was overloaded; they were worried about moving trains, worried about other things,” Mr. Prendergast said, adding that now, advocates are responsible for “the care and well-being of those people on stranded trains.”

“They have no other responsibility,” he added.

Advocates are just one change among many that the agency has made, Mr. Prendergast said. Transit workers have undergone emergency-response training, and in a crisis, the agency will no longer wait for the city to declare an emergency before acting, bringing situation rooms, command centers and an emergency coordinator into play. The city’s mantra of “run at all costs” has been dialed back, he said, in exchange for a more measured approach that could call for curtailing bus and subway service before a storm hits.

A recent example could be seen in the days before Tropical Storm Irene, when the city announced that all mass transit would stop hours before the storm was to hit New York.

The hearing on Tuesday was far less combative than previous Council meetings on the city’s botched response; attendance by members of the public was light, and officials with the transportation authority were the only speakers to address the Council.