Thumbs down for MTA design-build
Gov. Cuomo has for months touted a fast-track contracting method called “designbuild” as a way for the MTA to save money on its major construction projects, but new research suggests the practice will actually increase costs.
Alon Levy, a transportation analyst with a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University, has dug into the costs of subway expansions in cities across the world for years. He found New York City spends more than five times as much as Paris on new rail tunnels, and 30 times more than some other European cities.
Last week during a talk at New York University’s Marron Institute, Levy floated some reasons why the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s construction costs are so high when compared with similar transit agencies.
Chief among them was the privatization of construction work — and Levy warned a new requirement passed by the state Legislature this year to require the MTA to use design-build contracts on any project over $25 million could spell doom for the agency’s bottom line.
“The best exam ple I have is in Toronto,” said Levy. “While [Toronto Transit Commission officials] attempted to control cost with design-build, their costs exploded.”
Design-build, as defined by state law, means a single contract is issued for both the design and construction of a given project. Historically, MTA employees have been tasked with managing the design of projects, which Cuomo has said is a reason why so many projects are over budget and years beyond schedule.
At a press conference in October, the governor called design-build the “institutionalization of the L train project.”
“The MTA should not be designing projects,” he declared. “Design-build says bring in the private sector, let them do it.”
Levy, however, cited Madrid as an example of a city that contracts design and construction work separately with great success.
In 2015 the Spaniards completed a 1.8-mile expansion of the city’s subway system for roughly $133 million per mile, or about 3.5% of the $3.8 billion MTA plans to spend per mile on its shorter expansion of the Second Avenue Subway.
MTA spokesman Tim Minton cited five other recent independent studies that found design-build contracting can save money on public construction projects.
“We agree projects have to be completed better, faster and cheaper than in the past,” said Minton. “That is the reason we are radically transforming the MTA’s capital project delivery process into a single organization while attacking the cost and schedule of projects head on.”
But Levy said the root of the problem at the MTA was its lack of ability to hire and retain highly qualified engineers and managers. He said attracting talent is hard because public-sector jobs do not pay as well as those in the private sector.
“If you don’t have good civil servants, if you don’t have enough people doing design review, then you can’t do a big project,” said Levy. “Everyone hates the MTA, they think the agency should be privatized and destroyed. The result is that there is no political will to