When a gleaming new subway station opened at South Ferry in 2009, at a cost of over $500 million, its rickety forebear faded into retirement beneath the streets of Lower Manhattan.

But on Tuesday, more than three months after Hurricane Sandy hit Manhattan and doomed the new station to what could be a three-year rebuilding job, officials said its predecessor could be called back into service as a temporary replacement.

“We can’t have the impacts that people are experiencing today take many months,” Thomas F. Prendergast, the interim executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said at a City Council hearing on Tuesday. “That’s just too hard.”

South Ferry is the last stop on the No. 1 train and a critical connection for Staten Island Ferry riders. In its absence, commuters must either walk to the No. 1 at Rector Street, use the R train at Whitehall Street, or take the No. 4 or 5 train at Bowling Green.