MTA Construction

A subway station house grows in Manhattan. (Photos by Marsha Berkowitz)

The 96th St. station on the West Side IRT is currently a mess. As part of an $80 million overhaul of this heavily-trafficked station, the MTA is constructing a brand new station house in the middle of Broadway close to 95th st.

This station will be one of the Stations of the Future the MTA has been promoting lately. It will be fully ADA-compliant and will eliminate the current design flaw that forces Upper West Siders to go down a flight of stairs, swipe through, go down another flight of stairs and then climb back up to the platform. On the inside, it will eventually look like this:

For now, though, it is just a skeleton. A few months behind schedule, the new station house is slowly rising above Broadway. When I got word of the topping out of the new station, I sent Second Ave. Sagas’ Upper West Side correspondent — more affectionately known as my mom — to snap some pictures. The slideshow is below. One day — and according to my other UWS correspondent familiarly known as my dad, that day should be in September 2010 — that station with its new tiles and all will glimmer above Broadway.

For the last few months, I’ve fielded a lot of questions — mostly from the same person — about the trains along Queens Boulevard. The express trains, it seems, have been anything but that as they crawl out to Forest Hills.

Today, amNew York’s Urbanite blog revealed why. According to transit beat writer Heather Haddon, NYC Transit is replacing 800 feet of track in between Roosevelt Avenue and Forest Hills-71st Avenue. While most of the actual track replacement work is being completed over the weekends, the tunnel is currently replete with temporary tracking so trains have to run at slower speeds.

According to NYC Transit spokesperson Deirdre Parker, the work is scheduled to last until the end of the year but it should wrap up by September. Meanwhile, to combat the expected five- to ten-minute slowdowns, Transit will be running two fewer rush hour trains down an already-overcrowded line. While Haddon found a commuter who decried maintenance and upkeep as “heartless,” it’s simply the cost of a well-kept system. Them’s the breaks.

When the South Ferry station finally opened on Monday, it did so following a two-month delay due to an engineering error. MTA engineers, not accounting for a slight curve in the station, miscalculated the gap between the trains and the platform. When the agency ran some final tests on the station in January, this platform gap was in violation of ADA requirements.

Over the last few months, this gap — ranging from about one to three inches — has been the butt of many a joke directed at the MTA. It’s symbolic of the problems MTA construction projects have, and the fact that the station opened 15 months was hardly a surprise. From staircases to stations, the MTA’s on-time rate could use some work.

That said, Michael Horodniceanu, head of MTA Capital Construction, was more than willing to shoulder the blame. WNYC’s Matthew Schuerman reported:

REPORTER: Just days before the planned opening in January, the MTA discovered the gap between the trains and the platform measured up to four inches. That exceeded federal regulations by an inch. The head of the MTA’s capital construction division, Michael Horodniceanu, says the authority’s design guidelines didn’t take into account the curve of the platform.

HORODNICEANU: The standards that we had were for a straight-line station or a station that is in a very slight curve and this was more than that.

REPORTER: The MTA built an extra two inches on to the platform, knowing that some of it will rub off as trains come into and out of the station. The materials and in-house labor cost an extra $150,000. Horodniceanu says for a $530 million project, it’s a minor mistake.

I’m pleased to see Horodniceanu note the MTA’s mistake, but I have to hope that the engineer who didn’t allow for the sharper curve no longer has a job. It’s also worth noting that Horodniceanu, a few months into the job as head of Capital Construction, isn’t to blame. This one lies with Mysore Nagaraja and the people he had working on this project.

As the Senate debates disposing of Elliot Sander as MTA CEO and executive director, the men Sander has picked to fill his top spots are far more reliable and honest than previous MTA workers. While straphangers never want to see these construction delays and costs mount, at least now the agency is taking ownership of the problem. That’s progress we shouldn’t lose over politics.

Update 12:42 a.m. (Friday): I wanted to clarify something here. I don’t think that Nagaraja should have been fired for this mistake. I don’t think any of the engineers should have been fired. I meant that line as more of a flippant comment on Dr. Horodniceanu’s mea culpa. Nagaraja did an excellent job as head of MTA Capital Construction. He was a driving force behind the MTA’s current state-of-good-repair campaign and opened the tunnels south of the World Trace Center faster than anyone assumed.

This South Ferry mistake is a routine one that could impact any project. The longer delays are more of a concern, but those in charge are aware of the problem. Projects like these run into things — historic Battery walls, complications — and are tough to complete on time.

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.

* * *

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.