It has been six weeks since the recent Emergency Metropolitan Transportation Authority board meeting called by Gov. Cuomo.
It ended up being window dressing for his proposed new New York City Transit East River Canarsie subway L line tunnel design. At the end of the day, there were more questions than answers.
It is not a good example of how the MTA plans on spending several hundred million dollars in discretionary Federal Transit Administration Super Storm Sandy Relief and Resiliency funding. Over six years after Super Storm Sandy, why was this now declared an emergency?
MTA headquarters, board members, NYC Transit, and NYC Department of Transportation managers and engineers still need more time to review and comment on this “new design” along with budget, environmental and schedule impacts and useful life for tunnel repairs. The same holds true for both the MTA and Federal Transit Administration independent engineering oversight consulting firms.
It made no sense for the MTA to reassign management of this project from NYC Transit to the MTA Office of Capital Construction. NYC Transit has already successfully managed several Super Storm Sandy federally funded tunnel projects. For the most part, they were completed on time, within budget, accompanied by few design or change orders.
Contrast that with MTA’s Office of Capital Construction’s track record. East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal, if all goes well with the most recent recovery schedule, will be completed ten years late and $8 billion more than the original $3.5 billion budget.
Check out the original 2006 MTA/FTA Full Funding grant agreement and see for yourself. Second Avenue Subway Phase One and Hudson Yards No. 7 subway extension both suffered from delays, budget, scope and change order issues.
MTA Capital Construction currently has their hands full trying to complete East Side Access by the most recent recovery schedule of December 2022 and begin Second Avenue Subway Phase 2.
Why should NYC Transit hire yet another engineering consulting firm to perform an independent review of Cuomo’s proposed redesign?
This just duplicates the work of the MTA’s existing Capital Program Oversight Committee independent engineering firm. The same holds true for the FTA’s existing independent engineering consultant, who is usually assigned to monitor any MTA or NYC Transit federally funded capital improvement project over $100 million.
In these times of multi-billion dollar MTA funding shortfalls, paying for another engineering consulting firm is a waste of scarce financial resources.
Several hundred million was previously provided under a Federal Transit Administration Super Storm Sandy Recovery and Resiliency grant in 2016.
Based upon the board presentation, questions, answers and discussions, the MTA will probably have to update FTA’s previously approved project Environmental Impact Statement.
It is clear that the scope of work, project schedule, completion date, budget and useful life of investments will be different from the original grant commitments.
FTA employees have been back at work for several weeks after being furloughed. What has been the progress to date in the MTA informing the FTA of these changes?
The MTA is legally required as part of the master grant agreement with FTA to provide monthly financial and milestone progress reports. This includes any changes to the scope of work and contract change orders over $100,000.
This is accomplished under the FTA Transit Award Management System known as TRAMS. MTA and NYCDOT provide these reports on many other active capital projects and programs worth over $12 billion. Has the MTA met with FTA and its own independent engineering oversight consulting firm to provide a presentation on the new “design” changes?
As these developments continue to unfold, I would not be surprised when the MTA and FTA respective Office of Inspector General, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli begin to take an interest.
Sooner or later they will initiate their own respective review to see if there is any waste, fraud or abuse of taxpayer dollars. Their respective audits and reports will make interesting reading. As they say in Brooklyn, the development of this project is beginning to sound fugazy.
Larry Penner
(Larry Penner is a transportation historian, advocate and writer who previously worked 31 years for the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office.)
