MTA Construction

The new South Ferry station is sporting some serious signs of water damage. (Photos via The Tribeca Tribune)

A little over three years ago, the new South Ferry terminal had an inauspicious beginning. Due to some engineering errors, the gap between the train and the platform edge was unacceptably wide, and Transit had to delay the station’s grand opening for months over a matter of inches. This hold-up was a harbinger of things to come.

Over the past few years, we’ve heard of water damage impacting the station and poor water-proofing on behalf of the MTA’s contractors. This week, The Tribeca Tribune checked in on the station, and what it found at the $530 million, supposedly state-of-the-art facility was not promising.

Jessica Terrell had the details:

Opened to great fanfare in 2009, the South Ferry Station cost the MTA $530 million to build, and the agency continues to give special attention to its daily upkeep. On any given day, a half-dozen workers armed with spray bottles and brooms keep the platform and trains pristine. But careful cleaning by MTA crews cannot hide the fact that the subway’s newest station is already showing signs of damage.

Brown sludge drips from the ceiling, congealing in large swaths along otherwise sparkling white walls. In one of the hallways, strips of paint hang where the ceiling has bubbled. Many columns along the platform are missing chunks of tile, and wall tiles along an escalator are cracked or missing altogether.

What most commuters don’t know is that ever since the station opened, the MTA has been trying to fix the leaks that are causing most of South Ferry’s problems. “Addressing the leaks has been an ongoing effort,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said in an email to the Trib.

Meanwhile, the MTA and its independent engineering consultant have butted heads over the cause. Jerry Gold, the consultant, said the leaks were a result of shoddy tunneling work discovered before the station opened. By injecting grout behind the walls, this so-called remedial measure simply moved water elsewhere.

The MTA, though, blamed the station’s depths. South Ferry sits near the southern tip of Manhattan and below the water table. “Despite efforts to waterproof the South Ferry structural box during construction by the contractor, we have experienced leaks,” Ortiz said. “To remedy this problem, funding has been secured from the contractor to address the leaks through grouting.”

With money from Schiavone Construction — the contrator who constructed South Ferry and is currently working on Fulton St. — the authority conducted repairs last year, but temporary measures have not been successful. “We’ve done grouting and we need to look at other methods for a more permanent solution,” Ortiz said.

With missing tiles and water damage prevalent, the photos attached to The Tribune’s story are well worth the click-through. The story, though, gives me pause. The MTA is currently building four new subway stations in Manhattan and an overly expensive transit center at Fulton St. Should we expect better construction for our millions and billions or are we doomed to a system forever plagued by the ugliness and decay of water damage?

The MTA needs its contractors, and the contractors need the MTA. The authority, with its multi-billion-dollar capital plan, is one of the main drivers of the construction industry in New York City and the surrounding region. Without that investment and the drive to expand, workers would see jobs dry up, and contractors would see the flow of funds evaporate. Yet, all is not perfect between these two major players.

Yesterday’s amNew York featured an extensive interview with Denise Richardson, the managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York. Richardson is a former procurement officer for Transit’s capital program and has spent her career in various governmental and agency positions. In light of the current price tags attached to various MTA capital projects, Richardson’s words are quite informative and well worth our attention.

Richardson begins the Q-and-A throwing her voice behind the MTA. When asked what she wants to see changed, she argues for more comprehensive investment in and more attention paid to the MTA. “Everyone complains when there is a problem on their line,” she said, “but the MTA moves 8.5 million people every day and gets almost everyone to their destinations safely and on time. There was almost no capital investment in the system at all from the 1950s to the 1980s. They’ve spend $76 billion since 1982 trying to bring it back to a system of good repair, but some of these projects – like refurbishing the signal system to provide increasing capacity – are very messy and they still haven’t caught up.”

Of course, the GCA is a unique position to lobby for the MTA, and generally, they do so. They were an important voice during the lead-up to the funding of the capital plan, and they have argued for MTA dollars time and again in the past. They support congestion pricing, as Richardson explains in the interview, and they have some weight in Albany as well.

Yet, as the contractors have a symbiotic relationship with the MTA, they also have a slight parasitic one as well. Archaic work rules has led to overstaffing that significantly increases costs. While MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu once made an off-hand reference to me on overstaffing, few MTA officials are willing to speak at length about this problem, and Richardson didn’t say too much either. “As a practical matter, the only way we can build large, transformational projects like the World Trade Center or the Hudson Yards is with the skilled, unionized construction workforce,” she said. “[Unions] have had issues adapting to new construction techniques and new construction methods, but they’ve worked hard to address them, so it’s a positive future.”

Ultimately, Richardson’s dream lines up with the impetus behind this blog. As she says, she wants to see “a full-length, Second Avenue subway.” She explained, “The plan is for it to run from Upper Manhattan all the way downtown. I would like to see the funding to continue the project.”

The current leadership at the MTA has yet to come out with plans for Phase 2 north to 125th St., let alone ay sections south of 63rd St. The engineering studies have long been completed, but the dollars aren’t there. A first step in the right direction would involve a concerted effort between the GCA and the MTA to identify ways in which costs can be lowered. Can the MTA and its contractors reduce staffing levels on these projects? Why does everything goes significantly more in New York than in other cities around the globe? These aren’t easy questions, but they need to be answered.

The General Contractors Association could be the MTA’s best friend. They both need each other to move forward, but at some point, moving forward will require compromise and sacrifice. It’s not an easy path.

Apologies for the silence. It’s been a busy 24 hours. To tide you over for a bit, how about a little FASTACK recap? The MTA wrapped up the final part of the first 2012 FASTRACK treatment last night, and they’ll begin anew again with the Seventh Ave. line in early April.

“With the first round FASTRACK complete, we can already see how much progress we can make in the vital areas of cleaning and maintenance, and just as importantly, our customers can see it in the station environment,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statement. “There is a winning combination here of increased productivity and improved worker safety.”

Here’s how Transit summarized the early improvements:
Signals: Replaced 15 switches, serviced 34 signals, serviced two timers, supported the Track Division on various rail and switch jobs;

• Track: Installed 21 rails, installed 1,610 friction pads, scraped 16,750 feet of muck, removed 11,972 bags of rubbish, removed 27,950 pounds of scrap; Corrected 2,605 third rail defects, installed 1,269 plates, installed 60 tie blocks, and cleaned, scraped and bagged refuse from nearly four miles of track;
• Stations: 1,657 station lights replaced, 52 platform edge signs replaced, replaced 81 square feet of ADA tiles, repaired 1,510 linear feet of rubbing boards, grouted floor tiles, inspected 20 platform edges, installed yellow safety tack tiles and floor tiles at various locations, cleaned and tested 101 emergency alarms and telephones, inspected and cleaned 23 cameras and 12 monitors, and replaced two cameras. Additionally, workers scraped 19,970 square feet, primed 11,590 square feet, and painted 7,970 square feet of space at stations; and
• Elevators and Escalators: Cleaned glass enclosure panels, performed tests on fire alarms and sprinkler systems, corrected 22 outstanding work order defects.

Like it or not, this is, for the foreseeable future, the new normal for weeknight travel in New York City. That State of Good Repair remains elusive indeed.