New York City subway construction 'is the most expensive in the world' thanks to bloated staffing, inflated wages of up to $1,000 a day, and favoritism to unions and building firms that pay millions to state politicians
- Construction projects for New York City subways are the most expensive in the world
- New York Times expose reveals that wasteful spending on labor, inefficient staffing, and a lack of transparency at the MTA are to blame
- Independent mass transit experts say New York subway tunnels are built by too many workers while other cities make do with far less who build quicker
- While the average cost of construction worldwide is $500,000 per new mile of underground tunnel, in New York it is at least three times that amount
Construction projects for New York City subways are the most expensive in the world thanks to overall mismanagement by transit officials, favoritism toward powerful special interests like labor unions and building firms, inefficient staffing, and a bloated bureaucracy, according to a report published on Friday.
A lengthy expose by The New York Times reveals why New Yorkers are forced to foot the highest costs for the maintenance and expansion of their transit system than those in other world class cities.
The report found that the agency in charge of the subways, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, wastes massive sums of money by employing too many people to do work that can be performed in the same amount of time by half the number of personnel.
In New York, 'underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,' according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that did work for the MTA as well as other agencies worldwide.
When a tunnelling contractor from California observed a construction site in New York, he noticed approximately 25 people used to operate a tunnel boring machine.
'That's three times what I'm used to,' the consultant, Mike Roach, told the Times.
In 2010, the MTA was working on digging a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road.
An accountant noticed that the project needed 700 jobs to be done, yet documents shows that 900 workers were being paid at a rate of $1,000 per day.
That means large sums of money were wasted on 200 workers who were not needed.
Not only do labor agreements negotiated with unions and construction companies call for too many workers deployed on each project, but they also include inflated pay rates.
A union made up of tunnel-diggers receives a whopping $111 per hour in salary and benefits.
Workers are viewed underneath Manhattan at the Second Avenue Subway project site on January 10, 2014. The Second Avenue subway took 10 years to build and it ended up costing taxpayers $2.5billion per mile
Those who work overtime or on Sundays receive twice that amount – over $400 per hour, according to the Time.
The construction workers deny that they are overpaid. They insist the wages they are paid are due to extraordinary safety measures that need to be in place.
'Construction workers deserve every penny they make, and more,' said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5221667/New-York-subway-construction-expensive-world.html#ixzz52gZtzFn4
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