For those of us who are following along as the MTA moves ever so slowly with its great public works projects, an event on Tuesday at the Museum of the City of New York is right up our alleys. Entitled “Roads to Nowhere: Public Works in a Time of Crisis,” the panel discussion will feature top officials from the MTA and Regional Plan Association, among others, talking with Times reporter Michael Grynbaum on the state of the city’s rail infrastructure.
The discussion starts at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 22nd, and the museum is at 5th Ave. and 103rd St. The description is as follows:
New Yorkers living in the midst of economic crisis are getting mixed signals about the future of public works. Will the No. 7 subway line be extended to New Jersey? Will the Second Avenue subway ever be finished? When will real work on Moynihan Station get started? What is the fate of New York’s public works given the fiscal crisis in Albany and the economic stranglehold of “The Great Recession”?
Michael M. Grynbaum, transportation reporter for The New York Times, leads a discussion on public works in a time of fiscal crisis with Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, President, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Capital Construction Company (MTACC); Joan Byron, Director, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at Pratt Institute; Denise Richardson, Managing Director of the General Contractors Association of New York; and Jeffrey M. Zupan, senior transportation fellow at the Regional Plan Association. Co-sponsored by the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Regional Plan Association and presented as part of the Museum’s ongoing Urban Forum series on New York Infrastructure.
The museum is asking those who plan to attend to register ahead of time. It costs $12 for non-members, $8 for seniors and students and $6 for museum members. However, those who call 917-492-3395 to reserve can mention Second Ave. Sagas to receive a discount. I’ll be there. Say hi if you see me.
9 comments
For projects and project management corps on this scale, are there not ways to organize work better, for less of A wait while B runs a lift, moves a loader etc? Can some semi-repetitive tasks be automated – say, a simple robot A recognizes and preps joints to be welded, human eyeballs each for 15 seconds (possibly via a camera mounted on the machine), robot C welds, inspection bot picks out obvious defective welds and finally a human eyeballs anything critical. These robots are similar enough that they can be mounted on the same chassis and share much of the some programming; it could even be the some machine with a different toolset attached.
Construction is resistant to easy factory type automation, but there’s a lot of built in repetitive work and also hurry-up-and-wait. Not to mention the dollars that leak out in various ways. A billion dollars is, even today, a large amount of money.
There is also the issue of constructability and design quality. Engineers and architects often focus on designs that ensures the form and function of a piece of infrastructure meet requirements, and wow the stakeholders in presentations, but often don’t catch the design errors and difficulties in constructing it. Sloppy designs can also cost great amounts of time and money in change orders. GCs/PCs make their money when this happens.
Another thing to consider during design is the ability to use prefabricated components. It can greatly speed construction and reduce labor costs. It also requires better Project Management (construction coordination, scheduling, and control), an additional design emphasis and design quality control.
“Will the No. 7 subway line be extended to New Jersey?”
No. There you go, I just saved you $12. (NJ Transit would not want the 7 running to NJ because then people will ride it instead due to the cheaper fare.
You’re assuming a particular fare structure.
NJT might charge the same fare to Secaucus as to Penn. Or NYCT might charge a higher fare at Secaucus, with the extra bit going to NJT.
That said, NJT riders are willing to pay a bit more for faster service. On the NEC, most people going to Midtown stay on the train to Penn rather than transfer to PATH at Newark. On the Morris & Essex, most people going to Midtown opt for the Midtown Direct trains rather than going to Hoboken and transferring to PATH. And most notably, on the Bergen/Main/Pascack Valley, where nobody has a one-seat ride to Manhattan, lots of people transfer at Secaucus instead of Hoboken. So even if transferring to the 7 is a bit cheaper than staying on the NJT train to Penn, most people who want to go to Midtown will stay on NJT.
If the T party has it’s way, nothing will get built because all they would say is “we cant aford it.” Reality says otherwise.
I really wish I could go, damn living in D.C. some days. And yes the pie in the sky 7 idea will never happen (okay maybe in the next hundred years…) so I don’t actually understand pitching that as a reason to go but the other topics seem fairly interesting and worthwhile
I’m assuming that the ad for this event was written up a few months ago when the 7 to Seacaucus was the talk of the town. I’d guess that the 7 extension would still be discussed (at least in regards to its extension to Hudson Yards), and perhaps in place of the Seacaucus extesnion plans, the Gateway Tunnel project might be discussed instead.
Still amazing to think the US managed to build some pretty awesome and useful pieces of infrastructure during the Great Depression while now we can barely manage some unremarkable “shovel-ready” improvements to existing highways and an occasional subway/train line extension here and there.
[…] weekend and might not have seen my initial note, I just wanted to again draw your attention to an event tonight at the Museum of the City of New York. Entitled “Public Works in a Time of Crisis,” the panel discussion features Michael […]