Update 3:00 p.m.: New York City Transit officials tell me that the amNew York point, below, about wasted money is off point. Writes Paul Fleuranges, NYCT’s vice president for corporate communications, “For three consecutive days this week alone, the presence of a tower operator at the South Ferry relay room spared us some considerable delays to service.” That sounds like a good use of money to me.
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Fifteen months behind schedule and following an inch-induced delay, the MTA’s first new station since 1989 will open at South Ferry. The two-track terminal — the subject of behind-the-scenes media tour in December — will replace the old loop on the West Side IRT and offer a free transfer between the 1 and the N, R and W at Whitehall St. Expect updated subway maps soon.
“It’s been a long time coming,” William Wheeler, the MTA’s Director of Special Project Development and Planning, said to CB1 at a committee meeting this Monday. “When you see it, it’s quite extraordinary.”
Of course, as with any MTA construction project, even the opening of this new station is not without controversy. amNew York’s Urbanite blog reports that the station is a bit leaky, and while the MTA wouldn’t confirm that report to them, the Staten Island Advance corroborated the story. Maura Yates reported on the various delays:
Because of the station’s high water table, contractors were also working to plug leaks, by grouting spots where water was coming into the station. “It’s not something customers will notice,” said MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin.
Meanwhile, Urbanite’s Heather Haddon has tales of some more MTA waste coming out of South Ferry:
Originally scheduled to open by December, the MTA activated the signals in the station in November. Under railroad regulations, a signal maintainer must monitor the switches 24 hours a day once they go live.
But a platform snafu delayed the station opening by more than three months, leaving the MTA to pay for a signal maintainer to do nothing during that time.
According to the MTA union, a transit worker of that category gets paid $29 per hour, resulting in a compensation of about $75,000 for an around-the-clock unproductive vigil since the end of November.
No wonder the State Senators currently holding up the MTA bailout plan want more control over the agency’s finances. Reports of waste are doing nothing to help the cause in Albany.
In the end, the station is a much-needed addition to the Lower Manhattan transportation scene. It is the first of the post-9/11 redevelopment projects to witness a ribbon-cutting, and the MTA is estimating that the state-of-the-art terminal will service around six million passengers a year. That this solitary station is over fifteen months behind schedule though does not bode well for the 7 Line Extension or the Second Ave. Subway as they slowly march toward a mid-decade completion date.
4 comments
A significant part of that delay was also stopping for archeological investigation work. The other mega projects shouldn’t have this problem as they aren’t located on the sites first occupied by European colonists. When the project discovered part of the original fortifications of the tip of Manhattan, it kind of screwed things up.
The 1″ gap delay, however, was totally unacceptable.
Every government engineer, myself included, has project horror stories of years of delays and massive change orders. The sad thing is that the “easy” projects often turn out to be just as much of a hassle to design and build as the ones that look hard from the beginning.
Archeological delays are perfectly understandable. But for the union to turn around and the screw the public yet again like that is just… maddening. I hope whatever union shop was responsible for the 1″ gap was fined at least $75,000 to pay the other union shop for doing nothing while it was fixed.
What union are you talking about? Most of the MTA’s projects are done by contractors who DON’T use unionized workers. They use mostly immigrants workers.
in addition to what mr eric says, whose responsibility is it to turn off the signals? the MTA turned them on, not the TWU:
” Originally scheduled to open by December, the MTA activated the signals in the station in November. Under railroad regulations, a signal maintainer must monitor the switches 24 hours a day once they go live.”
another ideologically-motivated anti-union attack fails.