"The main question is, will it get worse? Everyone's wondering if another shoe will drop and that opening date will get pushed further into the future."
Mr. DiNapoli's report said East Side Access is now expected to cost nearly $8.25 billion and the opening date has been pushed back to August 2019, a dozen years after its groundbreaking. It is 10 years late and $4.4 billion over budget, figures Mr. DiNapoli labeled "the most egregious example" of the transit agency's tendency to underestimate the cost of its projects.
Mr. DiNapoli also noted that the transit agency had not been including the cost of new rail cars in the project. Doing so boosts the total price tag to $8.76 billion.
With its federal funding capped at $2.7 billion and New York State contributing $450 million, the MTA is being soaked with the cost overruns. The authority's slice has grown to $5.6 billion from less than $2.2 billion, according to the report.
The comptroller said that city taxpayers bear the brunt of the rising costs for East Side Access, which was designed to shave up to 40 minutes off commute times for 160,000 Long Island riders each day. The primary beneficiaries will be Long Island commuters. The cash-strapped MTA also stands accused of fare hikes that are on track to rise at double the rate of inflation through 2019.
Underestimating the complexity of a massive project is not unusual, Mr. Henderson said. "All kinds of things can go wrong, and in this case, many of them did." Transit advocates privately acknowledge that costs of projects are estimated as 'best-case scenarios' because figures that are more realistic would dissuade politicians from green-lighting important projects.
A revolving door of MTA bosses also makes it hard to pinpoint who is to blame. The MTA has not had a real chairperson in five years. Joseph Lhota resigned as chief executive of the MTA in December. His predecessor, Jay Walder, left a year earlier to run a transit agency in Asia. You cannot hold anyone accountable, and that is a problem.
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