Marc Molinaro, the new head of the Federal Transit Administration for Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, has struck a tremendous advance for government openness and transparency in publishing the usually secret reports detailing the schedule and expenses of major capital improvement projects.
On one project, Amtrak’s Gateway tunnel boondoggle under the Hudson River, the reports confirm that it is a huge waste of billions in government money that delivers zero benefit for even a single passenger. Molinaro must force a change.
Molinaro, the former Republican congressman and Dutchess County executive who was confirmed by the Senate on Aug. 2 on a large bipartisan tally of 71-23, was urged by this column to make public the reports of the Project Management Oversight Contractor assigned to major transit capital spending initiatives with a total budget of $300 million or more and with a federal investment of $100 million or more.
Molinaro last week put on the internet the August monthly PMOC report for the extension of the Second Ave. subway being built by the MTA and two of the quarterly monitoring reports for the Hudson tunnel that is sponsored by the bistate Gateway Development Commission.
As he said, “publishing these documents online gives the public a direct window into a project’s progress. This is about full transparency — empowering taxpayers to see firsthand how their dollars are being spent, and ensuring greater scrutiny and accountability.” Bravo, sir!
The same must apply to the FTA’s other 57 Capital Investment Grants program and formula-funded major capital projects subject to project management oversight. And it must be a comprehensive library, including all 12 monthly reports and all four quarterly reports for every project.
Furthermore, the redactions must be kept to a minimum. Why, for example, is Gateway’s grant drawdown status secret? And the public should know that the revised complete risk register was missing. The PMOC is supposed to identify problems. Let the taxpayers see what is going on with their money for their projects.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber told us: “First of all, I acknowledge that you’re the one who prompted them to do that because you’ve been pushing on that for some time.” He continued, “We have no problem with any version of transparency, we would like it if our staff response to these consultant reports were also made public and we’ll probably have to deal with that at some point.” Good and better. Let it all come out.
It’s no surprise that Molinaro started with Second Ave. and Gateway, as he has frozen $18 billion of their U.S. funding during the federal shutdown as compliance with Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) rules can’t be completed as the FTA’s staff is furloughed.
We are sure that the two projects are following those DBE rules and Second Ave. will get back its $3.4 billion from the FTA, even though the MTA is still spending far too much on unnecessarily large stations and made a major mistake years ago in digging such a deep line instead of copying the older subway routes, which are much closer to street level.
But the other $14.6 billion, for Gateway, could all vanish permanently and there would be no change for any passenger. The Gateway tunnel is not a New Starts project (a new fixed guideway system or an extension to an existing system) and shouldn’t be getting a penny. It creates zero additional capacity. GDC provided untruths to the FTA in the financial plan. The overall scheme, made up of eight other components, relies on segmentation, which is not allowed.
If this part of Gateway by itself is never built, there will be the same new capacity as if this part of Gateway by itself is built: nada. As we’ve said for years, it is just billions for a boondoggle. The falsehoods and cheating give Molinaro tremendous leverage over Gateway. He has solid reasons to kill the whole thing.
Molinaro must use his leverage to force GDC to save many billions and many years by changing the tunnel alignment in both New Jersey and New York to straddle the existing Northeast Corridor tracks instead of constructing a separate, parallel railway, sparing the demolition of a big chunk of Midtown, Block 780, for an unneeded stub-end terminal. Molinaro must also make them slim down the construction of the new tunnel with simpler methods and at the same time speed up the repairs of the existing tunnel using proven repair-in-place techniques.
Expose it all and make it better and make it useful. Otherwise, the $16 billion tunnel will have done nothing. Molinaro has made a good start with the PMOC transparency (which must be made comprehensive and permanent). Chopping billions off of the Gateway price tag and getting it done fast will be an even bigger accomplishment for Molinaro and a huge win for taxpayers and passengers.
