The U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration amended the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Long Island Rail Road East Side Access Full Funding Grant Agreement, which was recently signed off by both DOT, the FTA and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Sen. Charles Schumer and Gov. Andrew Cuomo are never shy around a camera or microphone and always looking for a photo op.
Neither of them held a standard Sunday sidewalk press conferences to celebrate this event.
Here’s why both Schumer and Cuomo are so silent.
After years of negotiations, the MTA and U.S. DOT FTA came to an agreement which would reflect the true current cost and schedule.
Both the cost went up and first revenue day of service slipped once again.
Taxpayers now have to pick up the tab for a $12 billion dollar project.
Riders will have to wait until Dec. 31, 2023 before boarding the first train to Grand Central Terminal.
Take a trip down memory land to understand how the MTA has repeatedly increased the budget by billions and pushed back the first day of service by years.
On several occasions the MTA has blamed Amtrak for being responsible for additional delays on the progression of LIRR ESA to Grand Central Terminal project.
Insufficient support from Amtrak has been responsible for periodic delays since 2006.
This includes failures to provide both sufficient track outages along with Amtrak Force Account (employee) support.
As a result, both LIRR workers and ESA third party contractors have had problems with timely and adequate access to work sites necessary to progress the project.
This problem will grow even worse in coming years.
Amtrak needs to assign its own limited Force Account staff to work in both the Hudson and East River Tunnels, Penn Station and other competing projects along the Northeast Corridor rather than support the MTA ESA project.
There is no guarantee that this issue will continue resulting in missing the new December 31, 2023 first day of passenger service.
Since 2001, the total direct cost for MTA LIRR ESA to Grand Central Terminal has grown from $3.5 billion to $4.3 billion in 2003, $6.3 billion in 2006, $8.4 billion in 2012, $10.8 billion in 2014 and now $12 billion today.
The original FFGA between the US DOT FTA and MTA was approved in December 2006.
The $2.63 billion of Federal Grant funding remains unchanged (virtually all of which has already been spent) with the MTA as local sponsor having to cover the $6 billion in cost overruns.
The FFGA was finally amended ten years later in August 2016 to reflect a more accurate cost and schedule.
Based upon past history, who knows if the final cost will go up again over the next seven years by a billion or more.
The anticipated opening day for passenger revenue service date has slipped on a number of occasions from 2011 to December 2022 and now December 2023.
Over the next seven years will both this date and budget hold. No one should be surprised, if it ends up in 2024 or later.
The MTA has repeatedly missed every budget and schedule for this project.
They have ended up being worthless paper. No one at the MTA will acknowledge that the real project cost may be over $15 billion.
This includes other items which are considered indirect and carried off line from the official project budget.
These are financing charges ($600 million), additional capacity improvements at Jamaica LIRR station ($450 million), along with numerous capital improvements east of Jamaica.
They include construction of additional parking spots (totaling in the thousands necessary to accommodate all the new riders) at numerous stations, new New York City Transit, MTA Bus, Nassau Inter County Express, Suffolk County Transit and Huntington Area Rapid Transit bus feeder services to stations, construction of new stations, completion of the Ronkonkoma branch double tracking between Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma ($450 million), Main Line Third Track between Floral Park and Hicksville ($1.5 billion plus $700 million to eliminate 7 grade crossings), new pocket tracks on other branches, new storage yards and other capital projects which will support implementation of ESA.
Without all of the above, the LIRR will not be able to achieve 100 percent utilization of this investment including the promise of 24 trains per hour during peak service periods.
Larry Penner
Great Neck
(Larry Penner is a transportation historian and advocate who previously worked 31 years for the US Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office)
