The flash floods that wreaked havoc on the morning commute for many New Yorkers had a relatively small impact on the city’s economy, officials said yesterday.

Though the city has not released an official financial assessment, officials familiar with the numbers put the loss around $94 million – a small fraction of the city’s $1.5 billion daily gross city product, a measure of goods and service produced in the five boroughs.

“It may be a small economic impact, but it was really a small rain story, and it makes you wonder what would happen it you had a serious snowstorm or a real hurricane with this level of preparedness,” said finance director to the City Council, Lorian Angelo, who was not familiar with the estimate, but said it seemed like a feasible number.

The remnants of Hurricane Frances, which hit Florida in force over the weekend, dumped 3.25 inches of rain on the city in three hours early Wednesday. It flooded draining systems and subway tracks and left city streets looking like tributaries.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said the intense rain “overwhelmed” the infrastructure.

On an average day, spokesman Tom Kelly said, the subway systems pumps out 15 million to 17 million gallons of water. But Wednesday’s deluge “went way beyond normal.”

The agency has $126 million earmarked for new pumps, but the massive volume coupled with the short time span created the problem, he said.

Several elected officials have expressed outraged at how the city was brought to its knees by the rain, saying the mass transit system was ill prepared. No economic loss would have been incurred had the system been better equipped, they said.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum wants an investigation and a spokesman for City Council Speaker Gifford Miller said he might launch a probe.

Yesterday, Ms. Gotbaum sent a letter to the Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, Christopher Ward, criticizing what she said was a 20% decline in the total number of catch-basin cleanings.

Catch basins drain water from roads into storm sewers. When they get clogged with debris, water can back up onto street and into subway grates. A spokesman for Ms. Gotbaum, Anat Jacobson, said the Department of Environmental Protection used to clear the basins weekly, but that budget cuts had forced a cutback.

DEP spokesman Ian Michaels said the public advocate’s numbers were off. He said 2002 was an exception because of mandatory extra inspections.

DEP inspects each of the 137,000 catch basins once every three years, and has done so at a rate of about 45,000 a year, except for 2002, he said.

Meanwhile, yesterday’s commute was relatively smooth. A signal problem on the no. 7 train, unrelated to the flood, caused delays for Queens riders, but otherwise the system ran normally.

By yesterday evening, Tropical Depression Frances was in the process of dissipating in Canada, just north of the great Lakes.

The National Weather Service said the storm brought 4 inches of rain to New York City in 30 hours. Though the monetary impact of the flooding may register only a ding on the city’s overall economy, that isn’t much of a consolation to those who did take a hit.

Business owners around Madison Square Garden, who lost customers during the Republican National Convention, were especially disheartened.

The owner of Perfumes Hut on 7th Avenue and 34th Street, Ashok Malhotra, said he had to get a friend open his store because he was delayed by two hours.

“I opened the store, but no one came in,” his friend, Litin Ak, said.

Several agencies declined to comment on the preliminary economic estimates, saying they had not seen the numbers.