It's just par for the course.
There are generally fewer scanners for a primary, because generally fewer people show up for one. These plans are made months in advance, so chances are, they didn't foresee that the race would be this close six months ago.
These damn scanners break all the time, that's why they deploy more of them, than they did lever machines.
It shouldn't take them more than a couple of hours to get one or two to any polling place in NYC. They do have spares. They just have to program them for the locality.
They do have a plan for you to vote when these machines fail.

have told NYC that it would be a large turnout, just by looking at every other state that has voted.

As the saying goes.

But I would have had at least the normal general election quota of voting machines for THIS primary. It AIN'T rocket surgery!

You tell me that you knew that there would be this turnout in NOVEMBER or DECEMBER, and I'll call you a psychic.

out last year and they do not have to ability to change plans with new data. A lot of places will look and see what is happening elsewhere, I now understand that New York City does not do that.

I used to work these elections. They go by history, and plan at least 6 months in advance. They have a lot of election sites to coordinate, and there are only a handful of people. For instance in my county of Ulster, there are about 8 people who must survey each polling site for the entire county. They have to arrange transport of the machines, and decide a route to deliver and pick them up as well. SIX people for a county of about 100,000 voters.
Tell me that they knew this back in October-December. I somehow don't think so.

NO ONE knows what's going to happen six months from now. There should be Plans B and even C to adjust for voter turnout. It's ridiculous our officials don't plan for this.

of what primaries have been in the past.
Radical contingency is the provisional ballot.
They have a hard time trying to find people to work the elections. These people work for the day, they are not full, or part time people. They have to go through a training, and then they can become election workers. They have to take a refresher each year as well.
It's not an easy task, believe me.
Don't expect them to be psychics.