Generally, when an expansion plan receives a contract bid and this bid is sent to a governing committee for approval, the approval is generally a sure thing. While those in charge — in this case, members of MTA’s finance committee — may voice objections during debate, the end result is generally an all-or-nothing vote. But the 7 line extension plans are proving to be a different beast as MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul voted against approving the bid and sending it to the full board for a vote.

In the world of the MTA Capital Construction, this is a very big deal, and while the truncated 7 line extension will probably still pass today’s full board vote, the session promises to be explosive. NY1′s Bobby Cuza has more on Saul’s decision:

Even though there was no competition, agency negotiators announced Friday that they were happy with the price they worked out for the tunneling work – about $1.1 billion, or just barely over budget. But the agency didn’t expect board members to criticize the deal at a committee meeting Monday.

“I can’t, for me as a fiduciary here, sit here and go ahead and approve a contract for over $1.1 billion of state money, or city money, or both, without having competitive bids,” said MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul.

Saul, the lone member to vote against approval for the contract, was not alone in expressing his dismay. Andrew Albert, not an MTA board member but a vocal transit advocate nonetheless, was none too pleased about the plans to eliminate the station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. entirely. “More [need] exists now around the 10th Avenue station than around the Javits Center station. Are we saying that conventioneers are more important than our own residents? I hope we’re not saying that,” Andrew Albert, of the NYC Transit Riders Council, said to Cuza.

But while the MTA board debates the contract today, City officials are working to secure funds for that station at 10th Avenue. Maybe we shouldn’t lose hope yet for this plan. According to Eliot Brown of The New York Sun, Mayor Bloomberg will try to cajole the state into forking over another $450 million to secure the station shell at least. Even this month would drastically reduce the cost of building another station on the extension in the future.

So now we wait. In an ideal world, the MTA board wouldn’t approve a contentious contract for a project that received just one bid. But in reality, that outcome seems unlikely, and we’ll be left with a flawed contract and an incomplete extension that will bypass the area that needs a subway station the most. Who goes to the Javits Center anyway?

As for a completion date, don’t expect the 7 line extension to materialize over night. Newsday reports that the line is due for completion in 2013 while NY1 says 2014. Anyone want to bet that something pushes this date back further into the 21st Century?

That station at 41st and 10th Ave. will no longer be a part of the plans for the 7 line extension.

The funding battles and plans for the 7 line extension are starting to mirror the tortured history of the Second Ave. Subway. For years, transit officials would plan the Second Ave. Subway, start the project and then stop work when the funds ran out. Stations were omitted from future plans; express tracks axed.

Now, after decades of waiting for a Second Ave. Subway and seeing plans come and go, the 7 line extension is playing out a similar tale. This weekend, the news slipped under the radar a bit, but the story is still the same. Due to funding concerns, the MTA is cutting out one of the two planned stations for the 7 line extension to the Far West Side of Manhattan.

To those of you following this story since the early days of this blog, this news is no surprise. In November, January and February, I wrote about how the MTA did not have enough money to build the planned station at 41st and 10th Ave. Instead, the Authority intended to build a station at 34th and 11th Ave. and a shell at 41st and 10th. While hardly cost efficient, this shell would allow for the new station at 10th Ave. when the money showed up.

Not anymore. The shell, as The New York Times reported, is being discarded. William Neuman writes:

The authority said it had received only one bid for the work, which includes digging the tunnels and excavating the space for the 34th Street station. The work was also to include the creation of a “shell” for an additional station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street. The contractor, the same consortium of companies that will dig the tunnels for the first phase of the Second Avenue subway, had originally submitted a bid that set the price for the work at $1.5 billion to $1.74 billion.

In a summary of the contract prepared for board members, the authority said that to save money, it decided to eliminate the shell for the 10th Avenue station, and the contractor then agreed to do the work for $1.14 billion.

In The Post, Jeremy Olshan reported that the shell would add another $500 million to the project. The MTA would have to cover any cost overruns, and this is money they simply do not have right now.

“The real irony is that there are many more homes and businesses near the 10th Avenue station than near the Javits station,” MTA board member Andrew Albert said to Olshan. “The bottom line is this is going to cost us a lot more later.”

I, for one, do not understand why the MTA, the real estate agents with holdings in the area and the City cannot reach some sort of deal. In the grand scheme of city finances, that $500 million should be fairly easy to come by. Considering that the MTA and the city are spending a combined $2.4 billion to build this tunnel extension and one station, the remaining $500 million really ought to be on the table.

These reduced plans will come back to haunt us later when the MTA builds the new station at a cost well above $500 million. In that future, I’m sure officials will be ruing this decision. For once, foresight should be 20/20 too.