Money down the hole

It’s very nice that the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation are recommending the MTA receive $496,784,764 from the Federal Transit Administration towards building the next leg of the Second Ave. subway from its 96th St. terminus north to 125th St. But it’s very bad that the project’s total price grew from $6,948,742,838 a year ago to $7,699,030,840, an increase of $750,288,002. A jump of 11% in a year?

And what’s also bad is that the maximum federal grant of $3,404,883,991 remains frozen. So last year, Uncle Sam was poised to cover 49% of the costs. It’s now 44.2% and dropping. That’s exactly what happened with the just-opened East Side Access bringing LIRR trains into Grand Central. Long, long ago Washington was going to pay close to half with a contribution of $2.6 billion, but costs kept ballooning and the $2.6 billion didn’t grow. In the end, the feds only picked up less than a quarter of the cost that exceeded $11 billion.

What all these numbers mean is that New

Yorkers will have to eat that extra three-quarters of a billion themselves for the new subway extension. It also means that it costs far too much to construct transit projects. The first portion of the Second Ave. line, up to 96th St, cost $2.5 billion per mile. East Side Access was $3.5 billion a mile. Paying $7.7 billion for the next 1.76 miles for Second Ave. comes to $4.37 billion a mile. And that assumes the $7.7 billion doesn’t grow, which it certainly will if history teaches us anything.

The dirt hasn’t gotten harder to dig through, why is it so damn expensive and getting worse? Researchers at NYU spent five years studying this question and have just produced a comprehensive 500-page report.

Part of the problem is that the politicians in charge have no incentive to save money; steeper costs just means greater “investment” in good, high-paying construction jobs. That’s nuts. If the next phase was “only” $2.5 billion/mile, $7.7 billion could buy three miles of subway instead of 1.76 miles.