Second Ave. Sagas

Category: MTA Construction

  • A glimpse inside the Bleecker St. rehab

    Photo by Benjamin Kabak. Click to enlarge.

    I found myself this afternoon waiting for an uptown 6 train at Bleecker St. The blue construction door, hiding the southern extension of the uptown platform, was locked, but I could see through a hole in the fence. Using my cell phone camera, I snuck a photo in before the 6 train arrived.

    The Broadway/Lafayette-Bleecker St. rehab is an extensive one. The station will soon be ADA-compliant, and the uptown 6 platform will be connected to the rest of the complex via a mezzanine that runs under the IRT tracks. Currently, straphangers can transfer from the 6th Ave. B/D/F/M trains only to the downtown 6. To accomplish this new crossover, the uptown platform is being extended a few hundred feet south, and that’s what you see above.

    Work at the station has moved relatively slowly. We glimpsed the first renderings in late May of 2007 and saw some cross-section diagrams in mid-2009. Last year, Transit went behind the blue fence and sent out some official updates. The $94 million project is still set to wrap by November of this year.

  • Wanting nicer stations without the inconvenience

    I love stories such as this one. It’s a typical person-on-the-street piece from the Daily News about the station closures along the Pelham Line. As the final phase of this rehab project, the Elder and Lawrence Ave. stations are to be shut for eight months beginning next months. Some residents are unhappy with the project. Or not.

    Basically, Daniel Beekman spoke to enough people to find those who want their cake and others who want to eat it too. “It’s going to be bad,” one commuter said. “Eight months is too long.” Another whose son will have to walk to another stop: “I’m concerned for my son’s safety. Why can’t they just do patchwork?” A third: “The paint is peeling. There’s a lot of graffiti. It looks terrible.”

    It’s always easy to find a good number of people with varying opinions on anything in New York, and this is just another example of the tenuous relationship with transit improvements everyone has. We want our system to look good, but we don’t want to pay the price of a shuttered station for eight or nine months. Our stop needs work, but I don’t want to be inconvenienced, and as long as everyone else’s stop looks new, leave mine alone. Seems perfectly irrational to me.

  • Event reminder: Public Works in a Time of Crisis

    Since many people were on vacation this past 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 Horodniceanu of MTA Capital Construction and Jeffrey Zupan of the Regional Plan Association, among others. Michael Grynbaum of The Times will moderate the talk on the state of the city’s transportation megaplans.

    The museum is located on 5th Ave. at 103rd St., and the event begins at 6:30 p.m. 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.

  • Event of the Week: Public Works in a Time of Crisis

    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.

  • Rehab at 4th/9th to include reopened entrances

    The east side of 4th Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in Brooklyn is currently a blighted one. The subway entrance and storefronts will reopen next year. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

    The main thrust of the Culver Viaduct rehab involves a complete overhaul of the station at Smith and 9th Sts. At the highest altitude in the system, the F and G stop has great views of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan Skyline, and it is a mess. The walls and staircases have holes; the paint is flaking off; the viaduct is sheathed in mesh to prevent it from falling. In a nutshell, it needs work.

    Down the road, though, the station at 4th Ave./9th Sts. is no better. Windows on the once-beautiful overpass haven’t seen the light of day for decades, and the platform and canopies are in equally as bad a shape as those at Smith St. Still, as the rehab project’s cost ballooned, the MTA had to scale back work at 4th Avenue. Now, though, the on-again, off-again rehab at that station is firmly back on thanks to the MTA’s component-based approach to repair.

    Even better, though, is news from the past week that will improve pedestrian flow and passenger safety: Thanks to an infusion of funds from Marty Markowitz and Joan Millman will ensure that, as part of the station rehab, the entrances on the east side of 4th Ave. will be reopened as well. As first reported by the Brooklyn Paper and confirmed this week by the MTA, Markowitz will contribute $2 million for station improvements and Assembly Member Joan Millman secured $800,000 for work on the 78-year-old station.

    Overstating his role just a bit in securing less than one percent of the funds needed for the entire Culver Viaduct rehab, Markowitz nevertheless spoke of the changes coming to the station and his vision for 4th Avenue as a grand Brooklyn Boulevard. “With funding I have allocated along with Assemblywoman Joan Millman, the MTA can pull back the billboards, fix the crumbling bricks and restore this 1930s art deco beauty to its former glory,” he said. “Its location on 4th Avenue at the crossroads of Gowanus and Prospect Park is highly visible from Downtown Brooklyn to Sunset Park, and its restoration as a signature streetscape element will mark the beginning of what I hope will be many more efforts to transform the entire stretch of 4th Avenue from the Atlantic Ocean to Atlantic Avenue into my grand vision for a magnificent Brooklyn Boulevard.”

    Millman chose to focus on the pedestrian improvements on the east side of the station. Assemblywoman Millman added: “As more people discover how wonderful it is to live in Brooklyn, especially along and near 4th Avenue, the increased demands on mass transit must be met. I also look forward to the reopening of the east side station house on 4th Avenue,” she said.

    It’s hard to understate how important it is to reopen those east side entrances. Right now, those heading to and from this popular station must cross 4th Ave. to get there, and the intersection at 4th Ave. and 9th St. has long been one of the more dangerous ones in the city. This entrance, long a blight on the area, will be a big help to those looking to avoid crossing the busy street.

    As for the details of the work, the MTA says all entrance doors and storefront windows will be replaced. The authority hopes to bring in new retail tenants in 2012, but the entrance itself will remain unstaffed. Below is a slideshow of photos I snapped there last week. The physical improvements will be welcomed indeed.

  • Solving the MTA’s construction costs problem

    Why does the Second Ave. Subway cost so much? The answer must be out there.

    I started this site in late 2006 when it became clear that the Second Ave. Subway would receive a $1.3 billion infusion of federal funds that would finally get the project off the drawing board and onto subway maps across the city. By the time I got around to discussing the project’s timeline in March 2007, the MTA had pushed an initial opening date of 2012 back a year. The MTA had hoped to wrap up Phase 1 by 2013 before moving onto Phase 2 in 2014. Phase 3 was to begin in 2015 and Phase 4 in 2017 as the full line was to be ready by 2020. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.

    As time wore on, the news got worse and worse. In late 2008, the MTA promised a 2015 completion date for SAS Phase 1, and in 2009, the authority had to push that date back again to 2016. Today, the authority continues to insist that the project will open in December 2016 even though the federal government anticipates an opening date as late as 2018 and costs as high as $5.7 billion.

    The years have not been the only problem plaguing the Second Ave. Subway. In the early part of the 21st Century, Phase 1 of the subway was to cost $3.8 billion. Today, the MTA hopes to bring in at around $4.5 billion but had cut the third track to eliminate $1 billion from the project’s balance sheet. Six years out, the final cost of Phase 1 is no sure thing.

    The Second Ave. Subway isn’t alone in this grand MTA venture. The Fulton St. Transit Center was supposed to open three years ago at a cost of $700 million, and now work won’t be complete in Lower Manhattan until 2014. It will cost $1.4 billion. Even the new South Ferry station, a relatively minor project, opened nearly 16 months late and $100 million over budget. That station has since sprung numerous leaks. This is project management at its worst.

    So that’s my long-winded introduction to this evening’s news. As New York prepares for the holidays and people pack up, Barry Kluger, the MTA IG, has released a report — available here as a PDF — highly critical of the MTA’s capital construction management structure. The findings in the right are not a surprise. “The failure to complete mega-projects on time and within budget has raised serious concerns about how MTACC has managed these projects and indicates a need for more effective oversight from MTA,” it says.

    The report itself is mostly mundane. Kluger talks about the interplay between MTA HQ, MTA Capital Construction, the MTA Board’s Capital Program Oversight Committee and the Independent Engineering Consultant brought on to advise the board on issues concerning the capital project. Essentially, too many cooks are in the kitchen, and project management and risk assessment efforts often get bogged down in the finer details of an overly bureaucratic.

    Ultimately, Kluger’s report suggests fixes as exciting as delineating responsibilities, presenting reports in clear and concise manners and better setting expectations, priorities and evaluation criteria. For the MTA, this hardly groundbreaking news. In fact, Jay Walder urged Kluger to conduct this review, and the Authority has already begun to implement many of the suggestions the inspector general put forward to streamline mega-project management. If the agency can better assess risks, it can at least begin to understand why costs are on the rise.

    For now, this MTA IG report is only the tip of an iceberg. As Kluger writes, “Upcoming work will explore other potential causes [of delays and costs increases], including those more fundamental and systemic in nature.” That’s going to be the meaty report. Why does it take so long to build a subway line in New York City? Why does it cost so much? As the MTA gears up to fight for money to close the $10 billion gap in its capital budget, those are questions the authority is going to need to answer. Better management might be a start, but it’s only just that.

    Addendum: As Kluger’s report came out late on Wednesday, it has received a modest amount of media play from the usual suspects. In Transportation Nation’s coverage, Jim O’Grady claims that, of all the MTA projects, only the 7 line is on time and on budget. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, that’s simply not true. The line is a year behind schedule, and the only reason it’s ostensibly on budget is because the city axed an entire station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. — or close to half the project. That doesn’t strike me as a project that’s on time or on budget.

  • Walder talks 2nd Ave. Subway and weekend work

    Jay Walder fields questions while standing in front of the Second Avenue Subway tunnel boring machine. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

    On day one, Jay Walder, MTA CEO and Chair, and I talked about the fiscal state of the authority. On day two, I presented his views on labor relations and alternate revenue sources. Today, we start with a topic near and dear to my heart: the Second Ave. Subway.

    We all know the story of the Second Ave. Subway. Eight decades in the making, the MTA is finally building part of the badly-needed line. Phase 1 of the SAS, one of the MTA’s three ongoing megaprojects, is due to be completed at the end of 2016 and at a cost of $4.5 billion. I quizzed Walder on the future of the rest of the project. Today’s is a longer segment so let’s dive right in.

    Second Ave. Sagas: One of the main thrusts of my site is the Second Ave. Subway and the capital expansion plans. I know there’s still some funding needed for Phase One, but I have to assume it’s too far along for the plug to be pulled. The political ramifications from Washington, from the City, from the MTA would just be too great to stop the project. What do you see as the future of the Second Ave. Subway? Do you realistically see a Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4? How long should we expect that to take?

    Jay Walder: My focus almost exclusively has been on the fact that we have three megaprojects that we’re doing right now. These are the first megaprojects that we have been doing for a generation — we’re really talking about 70 years depending upon how you count the stuff that has happened. My focus has been on ensuring that we’re able to deliver these projects on the budget and the schedule that we’ve laid out. As you note, our capital program is not funded with all of the money necessary to complete these projects right now, and that remains a concern. We need to find a way to ensure that we are completing these projects.

    At the same time, my other concern is that the mantra of this organization has been that we have to bring our existing system back to good repair, and we need to keep it in that condition. There’s much to be proud of in that regard. I started in this organization in 1983. When I started, the mean distance between breakdowns on subway trains was 7000 miles. It’s about 150,000 miles today. That’s a startling difference. You go around and you look at our station environment, and your jaw drops. Some of the station work is so nice and it’s been brought back — either bringing back the existing stuff and some of the artwork we’ve put in, and other things like that.

    But in fact, what this system is is a huge system that in essence is composed of lots of unseen hidden infrastructure that’s depreciating and deteriorating all the time. We need to continue to invest in that. The scarier thing is not the trains and the station. The scarier things are the signals and the pumps and the track and the shops and the other things that continue to need huge amounts of investment.

    We have a subway system today that has one line — exactly one line — that has modern technology for signals. The L train is the only line on which we’re using communications-based train control. We’ve now awarded a contract for the second line on the Flushing Line. But really, this is the type of technology that we need to be using across our system now. We are fortunate that we don’t have the red tags and the track problems and the other things that were going on in the late 1970s and early 1980s but we don’t have that because we invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year in the normal replacement of tracks. So that’s where I’ve been focused so far.

    If you look at the Second Ave. Subway piece, to their credit, the planners with the way they set this up are achieving a very usable segment of a railway so that when it opens in 2016, you will have something that will connect into the rest of the system, is a usable railway and will make an immediate difference in what happens. You’re well-placed point is that if we don’t stop there, where do we go from here? The intent is that it goes south from there, and funding-available, that is exactly what everyone’s objective will be. We also have pieces of preexisting tunnel north so you may well have the opportunity to pick up both ends of that.

    Will future sections of the Second Avenue Subway see the light of a day? (Click to enlarge the map)

    Second Ave. Sagas: The people I’ve spoken of say Phase 2 would be easier to build out than the other phases, but they wonder what the appetite for a project that’s taken longer than initial thought, that costs more than initial thought. Where will the money come from or the will and drive to see it through? (more…)

  • Solving the problem of skyrocketing costs

    Costs for the Second Ave. Subway could skyrocket before Phase 1 is completed.

    Over the last four years, I’ve burned a lot of pixels writing about the MTA’s capital budget woes. One of the major problems with which the authority has grappled, seemingly unsuccessfully, involves cost overruns. Nearly every capital project — from the station rehab at 59th St./Columbus Circle to the Fulton St. complex to the Second Ave. subway — have suffered cost overrun ranging in dollars from the tens of millions to the billions. As the MTA struggles to convince Albany that it deserves more money for the next five years of capital investment, keeping costs on par with initial estimates has become a priority.

    Yet, there’s a missing piece to this puzzle. Although the authority has pledged to keep spending under control, it hasn’t yet been able to explain why costs soar. Why does the Second Ave. Subway cost nearly $1.5 billino more today than it did when first proposed seven years ago? Why has the price tag for the Fulton St. complex doubled in five years?

    In the Wall Street Journal today, Numbers Guy Carl Bialik tackles that question. Why, he asks, has budget-busting become “the norm for infrastructure work”? According to a 2002 study, planners understated construction costs in nine of ten projects, and Bialik offers up a few explanations:

    Economists and behavioral scientists say the pattern of budget excess echoes findings in other areas where people allow their best hopes to dominate the planning process. Irrational optimism afflicts even individuals who have experience with a given situation, and should know better. Researchers have linked it to business analysts’ earnings forecasts and to students predicting when they will finish assignments. Irrational optimism, for example, is at work when a commuter is consistently late for work because she estimates her travel time based on the assumption that traffic and transit always will run smoothly…

    Prof. Flyvbjerg, who now heads the University of Oxford’s BT Centre for Major Programme Management, sees another factor in problems with cost estimates—the political process for project approval. “Government agencies like to justify what they do [with] numbers,” he says. And sometimes officials engage in what he calls “strategic misrepresentation” when producing those numbers.

    Other researchers have identified similar levels of inadequate monetary estimates but disagree with Prof. Flyvbjerg’s explanation. Dr. Merrow has compiled a database of thousands of projects, and finds a similar pattern of cost overruns. This extends to the private sector, he says, even though corporate employees who botch a budget might suffer more as a consequence. Among large private-sector projects with some tricky building element, the average cost overrun was 32%. Dr. Merrow’s firm advises clients to increase their forecasts by a factor roughly equal to the typical historical cost overrun of similar projects.

    Other experts say that the public demand for more amenities as projects are built can also lead to increased costs. Yet, that’s not really the problem in New York City because we see our projects’ budgets balloon before the first shovel breaks ground.

    While speaking with Bialik, Neysa Pranger of the Regional Plan Association called for a third-party auditor, and that appears to be the path New York politicians will take. “An independent validator should be established,” she said. “But they’ll need to establish a track record.” Anything has to be better than the track record of skyrocketing costs and delayed timelines we’ve seen lately.

  • Dyckman St. northbound platform to close until August

    A rendering of the Dyckman Street rehab.

    New York City Transit is preparing to unleash over 10 months of inconvenience on 1 train customers at Dyckman St. as the agency announced that the northbound platform will close tomorrow for a station rehabilitation. The northbound side of the station is expected to be out of commission until August 2011. The southbound platform will be closed from September 2011 through July 2012 for similar work.

    The authority first announced these plans back in July, but now the work is here. It is not without controversy however. A group of disabled riders has filed suit in an effort to stop the proposed rehab. They allege that the MTA’s plans, which do not include the legally required spending on improved access, violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. For now, though, the work will go on as planned.

    Transit says that uptown 1 trains will bypass Dyckman St. at all times as the northbound platform is completely demolished and rebuilt. Transit will reconstruct the platforms and canopies, adding new windscreens and repairing guardrails. The work also includes repairing the stairs into the station, restoring the concrete wall along Hillside Ave. and replacing damaged tiles. The station originally opened in 1906 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

    For service from points south to Dyckman st., customers are urged to take the train to 207th St. and transfer to a southbound 1 train. A second fare, says Transit, will not be deducted.

  • For 1 points north, two years of rehab work

    Dyckman St., shown here in 2005, is in dire need of a station rehabilitation. (Photo via flickr user masck)

    Back in the day, I used to ride the 1 train from 96th St. north to its terminal at 242nd St. on a daily basis. It would take me to high school, and as the years worn on, I grew familiar with the stops north of Dyckman St. where few people would get on or off. The route map — 207th, 215th, 225th across the water but part of Manhattan, 231st, 238th, 242nd — is ingrained in my memory, and although I haven’t made the trip in nearly a decade, I still have a soft spot for these stations.

    Now, these stops are gearing up for a rehab, and those commuters coming from Northern Manhattan and the Bronx are in for two years of service changes and weekend delays. The work — two simultaneous projects — are a bit of a $47 million effort to rehab the oft-neglected parts of the 1 line is not without controversy.

    The problems themselves are fairly straightforward. The biggest piece is a complete rehab of the Dyckman St. station. Similar to the schedule along the Brighton Line in Brooklyn, the southbound and northbound platforms will both close for stretches of ten months as crews deconstruct and reconstruct the station. Work at the stop will include the restoration of the concrete wall along Hillside Ave.; replacement of stairs; repairs of the ceiling; reconstruction of the platforms and canopies; and new windscreens and guardrails. Additionally, the tracks around the station will be replaced as well.

    Starting in September, the northbound platform will close for the work, and that closure will last until June 2011. Then, in July 2011, the southbound platform will close until August 2012. Per Transit, “During this time people will have to walk to the next station or ride back to Dyckman on the opposite platform.”

    Beyond Dyckman St., the station work will go on during weekends only. At the five stations to the north, Transit will engage in some component-based work as platforms, canopies and stairs will be rehabilitated. As of now, Transit plans to shutter those stations for 14 weekends between September and June 2011 and then in additional 14 from July 2011 to August 2012, and every station from 242nd to 181st St. will be closed.

    This sounds simple enough, but a few interesting details have raised some eyebrows. First, the Dyckman St. station will not become fully accessible during the rehab. Transit officials say the money isn’t there to bring elevators or ramps to the stop. They also claim that the station “does not fit the criteria for a key station” and is not on the list of 100 “key stations” to become ADA-compliant by 2020. Dyckman, said Deirdre Parker to DNAInfo, is “not a terminal point, is not a transfer point to other bus or subway lines, is not near any major activity centers and ranks 185th out of 422 stations in ridership.”

    Advocates for the disabled dispute these findings and bemoan the state of accessible stations in Northern Manhattan. “It is an area that is really underserved by mass transit as it is,” Michael Harris said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to deprive an entire community of the subway.”

    To compensate for the service outages, the MTA will run shuttle buses from 242nd St. in the Bronx to 207th St. on the A and will allow free boardings on the M3 from 168th St. and north. The agency however won’t add more A trains during the work, and many Inwood residents fear overcrowding. Despite these inconveniences and relatively low ridership, these stations have needed the work since my high school days, and the 1 will be better off for it.

    After the jump, a rendering of the new look for Dyckman St. (more…)