If the city gets hit by a huge rainstorm – courtesy of Hurricane Ivan and bad weather in the Rockies – residents could be faced with a transit mess like last week’s subway fiasco.

Riders concerned about a repeat of the morning rush hour mess last Wednesday will not find solace in the work of the state or city’s transportation departments: Neither is planning any special preparations for the coming storms.

New York City Transit has a preparatory meeting scheduled for today at which they’ll discuss remedies for last week’s flooded tunnels.

The public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, called for an investigation of the subway closure last week, and is concerned about potential problems this weekend.

“I’ve urged both the MTA and the Department of Environmental Protection to step up their efforts to prevent flooding on the tracks,” she said. “New Yorkers shouldn’t have to suffer through another subway shutdown caused by rain.”

The rain expected this weekend will mostly come from storms hanging over the Rocky Mountains, according to the National Weather Service, but when they get to New York on Friday, their intensity could be increased by the proximity of Hurricane Ivan, expected to make landfall tomorrow near Louisiana.

Last week, a storm dumped 3.25 inches of rain on the city in less than three hours, filling storm sewers and seeping into subway grates.

The 100-year-old subway pumping system was overwhelmed, and water levels rose to the level of the high-voltage third rail on some lines, forcing them to be shut down. New York City Transit placed a line in its capital budget earlier this year to upgrade pumps and wells along four of the subway lines, but the Legislature has not approved it.

Ivan is in the Gulf of Mexico, a Category 5 hurricane with winds surpassing 165 miles per hour. It has already wreaked havoc in Grenada and Grand Cayman, and grazed Cuba. It is expected to hit the Gulf Coast portions of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.

According to the National Weather Service, the storm should move slowly northward over the weekend before dissipating over the Appalachian Mountains. Its presence in the South will encourage storms to form over the city on Saturday, Sunday, and early next week.

If Ivan brings another subway closure, it would be the third time in five years that rain has brought the city’s circulatory system to a halt. In 1999, a storm brought 3.05 inches of rain during the morning rush hour, stranding riders on Metro North and Long Island Railroad platforms, and flooded bridge and tunnel access roads, much as it did last week.

Peter Vallone, the City Council speaker at the time, called for an investigation into how the MTA handled the storm. Communications systems failed and intercoms were fuzzy, leaving commuters clueless.

Though New York City Transit had trouble with its Web site and did not get delays posted late into the morning, other systems improved in last week’s storm, said a senior attorney for the Straphanger’s Campaign, Gene Russianoff.

“They tell the bus drivers bringing people into these feeder routs that there were problems,” he said. “I know they can get the command center into each bus, I heard the bus operator being told, the 1 is out, the M is out.”