The MTA could find an additional $600 million in savings on its bloated Second Avenue subway extension project, a Post investigation found. The agency faces pressure to prove it will spend the unexpected costs of future congestion charges wisely.
New York City could implement a controversial $15-a-day toll on cars driving below 60th Street in Manhattan in three more months. This would give the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $1 billion a year to spend on projects like the Q line extension. east harem.
Lucas Callejas, 38, an Inwood real estate agent, said at Monday’s public hearing on the congestion pricing plan that the MTA’s management is inefficient and that giving more money to unelected bureaucrats doesn’t help the MTA. The problem will not be resolved,” he testified.
“I will never trust the MTA with my money…They spend it like crazy,” Staten Island resident Memorial Sloan Kettering told the Post after testifying against the tolls. added Dana Matarazzo, 40, an oncology nurse.
Last month, MTA officials announced a total of $6.9 billion to $300 million to extend the Q Line from its 96th Street terminus an additional 1.5 miles up Second Avenue and west along 125th Street to Lexington Avenue. announced that it would be reduced.
But a Post analysis found that the MTA’s station design could save an additional $600 million compared to what it would cost to build similar projects overseas.
While the cost of building the tunnel is in line with costs in other major cities such as London and Rome, the cost and design of the station remains on a completely different level, a Post analysis found.
Before the recently announced cuts, the MTA’s budget for tunneling, track work, stations and power, computer and radio systems was estimated at $4.1 billion.
Thanks to new “more efficient” station designs, this figure has been brought down to $3.8 billion, but in the worst case it is still more expensive than the $3.2 billion it would cost to build a similar project in London. London is the most expensive city in London to build a similar project. scenario.
Experts and researchers focused on two major factors that drove the cost of MTA stations to levels not seen elsewhere. It is the amount of area set aside for passengers to circulate on the mezzanine level before heading to the platform. and the amount of “back of the house” area closed off from public view, providing space for storage closets, mechanical equipment, and a break room.
For example, the design for 106th Street, the first of three stations proposed, would have a station depth of approximately 50 feet, with a mezzanine level 550 feet long and 30 feet wide, according to federal documents. Construction is required. Only 1,860 passengers took the train during the morning peak period.
This is large enough to guarantee each straphanger 9 square feet of personal space on the mezzanine for an hour during the morning commute, allowing one person to stick out their arm the entire time and avoid contact with others. Enough to keep you from touching your soul. It is sized to accommodate approximately 25 one-bedroom apartments.
For comparison, the proposed 116th Street stop would be at about the same depth and serve about the same 1,670 passengers during peak hours, but would have a small mezzanine at the entrance, according to the application. There are two of them, and their combined area is just 4,860 square feet. space.
The MTA declined to say how much it expects each new station to cost or how much of the newly announced $300 million in savings will come from design changes. .
But MTA filings with federal regulators before the latest adjustments were implemented pegged the budget for all three proposed stops at $3.4 billion, meaning the budget would be at least $3.3 billion. billion, meaning it remains at $1 billion per stop.
London authorities could build three similar stations for about $2.3 billion, according to the paper’s analysis.
The analysis incorporates some of the most over-budget and delayed stations built in recent times in the UK capital. These included the recently opened Bond Street stop on the Elizabeth Line, which was repeatedly over budget and so poorly managed that the contracting company went bankrupt. I was fired.
The station will be built using the same construction techniques the MTA uses for 125th Street and will accommodate trains that are 100 feet longer than those the MTA runs on the Q River.
Adjusting for MTA train size and currency conversion, the cost is $1.2 billion.
The Woolwich station, also on the Elizabeth Line, was built using the same technology the MTA uses for the 106th Street and 116th Street stops.
A version of the design tailored to the size of the Q train would cost between $500 million and $600 million each, the analysis showed.
Both London stations allocate far less space to back-of-house functions than the MTA’s design, which means the excavations are smaller.
The analysis used the MTA’s inflation equation to equalize costs and project them in 2027 dollars.
But experts said the new design for the heavily reworked 125th Street MTA presents a much smaller and less complex structure than the one first proposed in 2004.
MTA officials said at a news conference that one of the biggest changes was the decision to push many of the back rooms into an air tower the agency was already building to ventilate deep stations. They estimated it to be five to 10 times cheaper than digging underground.
The new design will carry nearly four times as many passengers per square foot as the 106th Street design, according to the paper’s analysis.
Federal regulators gave permission to redo the 125th Street Station design in 2020 during a second review of the East Harlem section, but officials said an article in the Post highlighting the scale of the original 2004 design The full scope of the overhaul was not revealed until the end of the review. . An initial arrangement approved by regulators in 2018 allowed the MTA to install the 116th station in an empty section of the existing tunnel.
Three reviews resulted in an estimated 17% reduction from what could have cost a total of $7.6 billion, records show. Officials said the third round of reviews remains ongoing.
The total budget for the East Harlem expansion, currently at $6.6 billion, includes $245 million for land purchases and prominent sites, $559 million for outside engineering, design and management firms, and an additional $943 million. It also includes a huge budgetary reserve fund of US$.
Had the MTA reused the station design for the Upper East Side Extension of the Second Avenue subway, construction costs for the project alone could have reached $4.4 billion, significantly delaying the project and cost broke the record.
“The hard part is turning this ship around,” said Eric Goldwyn, who led the research team at New York University. He revealed how the MTA’s Upper East Side design was huge and dramatically bloated compared to those used in Stockholm, Rome, and Istanbul. It costs money.
“When people asked them about our research, they basically said, ‘We had a hole,'” Goldwyn added. “I’ve been encouraged by what I’ve seen so far, but it’s definitely something I need to keep looking at.”
MTA President Jano Lieber previously attacked the New York University team and its 400-plus page report, deriding the researchers as part of an internet “subculture” He claimed that he used the wrong city when comparing the cost and design of the city.
The paper’s own subsequent article tackled these criticisms head-on by comparing the MTA to Europe’s largest and most famous capitals, London and Paris.
Experts and veteran transportation officials like Goldwyn say the MTA’s overconstruction is partially caused by an underdeveloped system of megaproject development. The idea is to give consultants a blank sheet of paper, salvage excess designs, and then have a captive review department cut them down. under.
The MTA’s major projects division has only about 100 staff, but London has six times that number and the Paris transit agency has an estimated 2,000 staff.
The MTA declined to comment.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton
