In Transit Fantasyland, the Fulton St. Hub would have been completed last year at a cost of $700 million. Instead, after years of delays, redesigns and cost overruns, the MTA in 2007 eventually set a completion date of 2014 and a budget of $1.4 billion. “What I present today, I stand by. I expect you to hold me accountable to it,” Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu said a few years ago, and it appears as though the authority is indeed sticking to its schedule.
As Matt Dunning of The Tribeca Trib reports, the Fulton St. Hub is still on pace for a 2014 opening. “The job is going well,” Uday Durg, a program executive at the MTA, said to a Community Board 1 meeting recently. “All of our contracts are moving on schedule and are tracking on budget.”
As Dunning notes, 2011 will see the continued gradual opening of parts of the hub. Southbound R trains will again pick up and drop off passengers at Cortlandt St. by 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of the 2011 attacks. A new entrance for the West Side IRT will open on William St., and a temporary tunnel between the IND platform and the East Side IRT stop will be available for use as well. With the Corbin Building shored up and funding in place, the plagued project is finally getting well off the ground.
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