Subway Diversions Extra: MTA Paid Millions for “Unproductive Work Time”

By on July 31, 2011 10:41 pm in News, Transportation

The weekend’s coming to a close, so the current cluster of subway diversions, mostly kind to Brooklyn Heights except for the complete absence of the 4 train, will be done by shortly after dawn. Still, we get the following disturbing news (follow the link for video):

NY1:In a new audit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s weekend subway construction projects that re-routed lines, the city and state comptrollers have found that the service disruptions brought about prolonged hassles for riders and squandered money.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and City Comptroller John Liu say of the 29 diversions audited from January of 2009 until June 2011, work started late on all but one and stopped early on 21 of the projects, resulting in $10.5 million spent on “unproductive work time.”

The comptrollers also found that 15 diversions were over-budget by a total of more than $26 million.

So, next time you “can’t get there from here”, you may justly wonder if your inconvenience is balanced by future benefit.

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  • AEB

    Can’t be true!!

  • Josh G

    I wish I could say I’m surprised.. the MTA brass is just not able to balance a budget. I don’t blame Walder for jumping ship to HK.

  • Elmer Fudd

    Kick-backs, kick-backs….

  • David on Middagh

    Promenading, that’s an interesting and disturbing piece. Because of the Brooklyn Bridge (threats against it, marches across it, incidents upon it), we receive our share of police chopper traffic. I’m not sure why the link was posted in a subway thread, but it’s worth following.

  • Eddyenergizer

    A former employee of mine, went on to work for the MTA in the maintenance department. He told me the inefficiency there was almost unbelievable; often, they would set up to do a job then realize they didn’t have a specific part or tool with them and the whole crew would spend an entire shift doing nothing. What’s even worse, sometimes said parts/tools were intentionally hidden, to bring about the “workless shift”. Also, he said, the simplest repair jobs would take ridiculous amounts of time “something one guy could fix in an hour would take 3 guys a shift or two”….

  • Eddyenergizer

    Oh, and that was back in the mid 90’S

  • x

    I like how all the inefficiencies and waste have passed along to the riders in the way of increased costs and decrease in service.