MTA managers ignored busted metal racks on Brooklyn, Queens elevated tracks despite risk of debris falling to streets: report
For more than five years, MTA managers let corrode a mile of metal racks holding equipment on elevated subway tracks — and then tried to cover up the problem, which could have resulted in debris raining to the street, said a report published Thursday by the agency’s inspector general.
Transit crews in 2016 identified a sorry-looking set of cable trays on the elevated J, M and Z line, which runs through Brooklyn and Queens. The trays hold key equipment for the line’s signal system that directs trains along the tracks.
The equipment was in such bad shape crews feared it would break off from the overhead structure, the report said.
But the problem was allowed to fester for years, even after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority issued a $25 million contract in 2019 to make infrastructure fixes on the areas of the line where the trays were falling apart, with construction launching in August 2020.
The inspector general reported the contract was vague as to whether the planned work would include the replacement of the cable trays.
In January 2021 the contractor responsible for the work flagged 6,440 feet of failing cable trays near 12 elevated stations, the IG report said.
But work to fix the problem didn’t begin until after MTA officials requested an additional $2.9 million for the contract in June 2021. MTA officials claimed transit engineers did not know about the busted trays, the IG report said. The extra money was approved by the MTA board in June 2021.
“It was well-known to many agency personnel that the cable trays were in very poor condition and could not support the new cables,” the report states. “Clearly, the inhouse designers had made a mistake by not including the replacement of cable trays in the original contract scope of work.”
Even as the work wrapped up, the stretch of tracks has seen further issues.
A busted decades-old cable sparked a fire in June that rained sparks on the street below the J, M and Z line tracks in Brooklyn, delaying commutes and shining a light onto the subway’s aging electrical equipment.
MTA Inspector General Elizabeth Keating said the issue shows why costs become inflated on many of the agency’s projects.
“Expanding scope once a project is underway is notorious for increasing the cost of a project, as any homeowner knows,” Keating said.
MTA spokesman Michael Cortez said a 2019 reorganization of the agency that consolidates construction management under a single group would help prevent more problems like the one on the J, M and Z line.
