Slow order for New York megaprojects?

Railway Age, May, 2008 by Douglas John Bowen

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Cost overruns, budgetary revisions, and personnel departures have cast a pall on rail transit capital expansion plans for the New York metropolitan area, by far the No. 1 U.S. transit marketplace, as economic forces force revision and reconsideration of projects exceeding $20 billion, and as parties scramble for funding alternatives.

The "good" news is that some of the economic forces are pushing the beleaguered projects forward, not holding them back. Gasoline and energy price increases, continued increased congestion, a growing "green" movement, and rail transit ridership increases already banked make full-scale retreat or abandonment of construction projects as politically unpalatable as spending too much.

As one example: New York State legislative leaders last month tabled (and killed) a congestion pricing plan for New York City, championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that would have generated $500 million per year for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's $15 billion capital program. (Federal start-up funding of $354 million was to be included.) Within 48 hours, Gov. David Paterson, who supported the congestion pricing plan, announced a blue ribbon commission to identify alternate means to finance MTA's capital plans.

Still, the defeat of congestion pricing was just the latest obstacle confronting the city and its transit expansion efforts. Cost overruns were identified for the $6.3 billion Long Island Rail Road East Side Access tunnel to Grand Central Terminal. MTA renegotiated one contract, and stretched out its construction timeline, to address the problem. Local cynics began speculating that the $4 billion Second Avenue Subway project (Phase I) would once again be postponed or delayed, as it has been repeatedly for decades.

The new World Trade Center Transportation Hub PATH terminal, an MTA joint project with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PA), is also under fiscal siege, as cost estimates rise from $2.2 billion to as high as $3.4 billion. PA Executive Director Anthony E. Shorris resigned last month as concerns and criticism about the project mounted. Shorris had identified a fiscal ceiling of $2.5 billion for the hub; the PA is providing $1.9 billion of the project's cost. The WTC hub was originally planned to be linked to MTA's Fulton Street Transit Center subway station complex, itself subject to scalebacks and redesigns.

Shorris also had publicly speculated that the PA might contribute financially, and/or offer design and engineering expertise, to the $3.2 billion Moynihan Station project in Midtown, a perennial problem child pulled by the disparate needs of MTA, New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, the city, and various private companies.

Tied to Moynihan Station, a revamped upgrade of Amtrak's Penn Station, is the $7.6 billion Access to the Region's Core project championed by NJ Transit to improve New Jersey's rail link to Midtown Manhattan, in conjunction with a $3.0 billion Portal Bridge rebuild and track expansion project in the New Jersey Meadowlands along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. NJ Transit, the PA, and the Federal Transit Administration have committed some funding to the twin projects, still undergoing environmental reviews, but a considerable fiscal gap remains. (MTA is not a contributing party.)

Not all funding has dried up. The Bush Administration's fiscal year 2009 budget awards nearly 44% of its New Starts transit funding to East Side Access ($277.7 million) and Second Avenue Subway ($219.3 million), hardly pocket change by anyone's standards (even New York's). MTA has not yet rescinded its $29.6 billion, five-year capital program for its far-flung regional properties; PA remains committed to a $3.3 billion upgrade of its PATH rail lines serving New York and New Jersey; and even NJ Transit, held hostage to the Garden State's budgetary woes, insists it will carry forth with its plan to improve access to Manhattan, given record ridership on its trains, light rail, and buses.

But as deadlines are revised, project priorities rearranged, and power plays continue to pull at a vast array of projects in the New York metropolitan area, it appears increasingly likely that political triage may reduce the number, or at least the range and scope, of rail transit improvements and additions drawn up when government and agencies were more flush with funding.