Breaking: Clark St. Station To Close For Eight Months

By on February 14, 2020 4:37 pm in Transportation

Just reported by José Martinez, transit reporter for The City

Details to follow as they are made public…

Photo, used with permission: DanTD via Wikimedia Commons

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  • BrooklynHeightzer

    Make it 12.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    At least…

  • gc

    Just over a year to build the Empire State Building.
    Now we can’t repair the Clark St elevators in a similar amount of time?

  • meschwar

    At least 4 people died during the construction of the Empire State Building. Probably more. We have safety regulations now. Things take longer. It’s a good thing.

  • BrooklynHeightzer

    You would think they should not these days…but sadly workers (and pedestrians) are still dying at the construction sites. It is NOT “safety regulations” but the bureaucracy, money/budget and shoddy work (remember the wobbly bridge?) that cause the delays.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    ^^^Not a good analogy. Remedial work always takes much longer than building new. Simply, when building from scratch there is nothing in the way,
    Safety regulations do slow work down a bit but not drastically.
    The main reason construction take much longer these now is the number of workers there are on the crews. Let’s say the Clark Street elevator project will have an average crew of 15 per day. In the 1930’s they would have thrown maybe 60 workers at the project as labor was cheap back then. So the project would get completed say twice as fast but with 4 times the labor. Reason, the efficiency of each worker drops when you have too large a crew. Overall the job may get done faster but at twice the labor cost. And these days, labor is the biggest part of the budget. As this is a public works project that’s the biggest concern.
    Bureaucracy, materials testing, inspections, etc, also slow things down.
    The wobbly bridge was a victim of an inherently flawed design, not shoddy construction.

  • BrooklynHeightzer

    Agree with you 100%. I thought of EXACTLY what you said right after I had already posted the comment. I believe the labor cost is a great, if not the greatest, factor (that is the budget). But bureaucracy and poor subcontracting choices (shoddy work) fraught with corruption certainly play a role.

    “The wobbly bridge was a victim of an inherently flawed design, not shoddy construction.” – note that flawed design is also a shoddy work.

  • BrooklynHeightzer

    While we are on this topic… I wonder how this is going to play out.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/nyregion/upper-west-side-condo-zoning.html

  • Edo Express

    $2.5 billion per mile for the 2nd avenue subway line.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html

    The MTA is one of the most dysfunctional organizations to run our subways let alone coordinate and plan construction projects. They apparently did not get that memo about having too many workers actually inhibits productivity.

    Maybe we need a panel of outside experts to evaluate this project as well.

  • AEB

    Uh, WHICH eight months? Just a detail, I know, but….

  • Teresa

    That hasn’t been announced yet. Just a detail, I know, but…

  • AEB

    Thanks, Teresa. Surely it will take years to determine which months….

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    Correct, Labor is the biggest cost in construction. On commercial jobs the strategy is usually to get the job done as fast as possible because any inefficiency is offset by sooner realization of the revenue stream. But in the public works world, time is much less of a consideration.
    “note that flawed design is also a shoddy work”
    Indeed it is. In the case of the Wobbly Bridge it was probably due to over reliance on computer modeling. The data you get out is only as good as the data you put in and with such a new, unproven design, that data would be very questionable. Hubris undoubtedly played a role as well.

  • TeddyNYC

    Maybe there will be incentives or penalties to get the job done on time.

  • MaryT

    Could be very hard on Clark/Henry vendors, too. Anyone know what effects the last long closure brought?

  • Sweeties

    Grrr! Closed at the weekend for 18 months (originally estimated at 12). Now, completely closed for at least 8 months. The MTA is a joke. The “FastTrack” program has been running for over 20 years, and is still a crappy weekend experience, system-wide.

  • MaryT

    MaryT

  • MaryT

    Could be hard for Clark/Henry vendors, too. Anyone know how that played out during the last shutdown?

  • Andrew Porter

    Article in The Brooklyn Paper about how no one told them anything:

    https://tinyurl.com/wlcxqb8

  • Andrew Porter

    You know, you can edit your posts to avoid multiple ones…

  • Andrew Porter

    Super Storm Sandy was a crappy experience, too. And they’re still fixing the problems that caused.

  • Clara West

    Hope they will have the bus service as they did the last
    time they closed the station!
    Can’t depend on High St station as the escalators are
    usually out of service as well.
    Plus, even with 3 escalators 2 of them CAN’T be reversed.
    Leaving seniors and ADA riders to walk down the long
    staircase and then another staircase to get to platform!