Walk down most streets in New York City and you’ll see construction underway — which is a very good thing. The construction transforming so many neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs will create affordable housing for a growing population, modernize our aging infrastructure to avoid outages and breaks, and build a more livable and resilient city for all to enjoy.
Meanwhile, money spent on construction jobs greatly boosts our economy, keeps union workers employed and expands their ranks with new, skilled tradespeople.
What you don’t see, unless you take the time to peer over the fence and into the trench, is the jumble of utilities we call “underground spaghetti.” While every city and town rely on its utility lines, New York City’s utility lines are unique: installed over centuries, they represent a thick mix of city-owned lines like water mains bringing drinking water to residents and sewers removing waste and collecting rainfall, and privately owned lines like electric, gas, and telecommunications.
The agreement that allows private utilities to locate their lines underneath the city’s streets also requires them to move their lines out of the way and protect those lines at their own cost when the city needs to upgrade its infrastructure.
This unique arrangement saves taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year because the private utilities pay their own costs to relocate, and they share in a portion of the city’s overhead costs when a public project is underway. But it also creates a coordination puzzle.
Since only one contractor can be responsible for an open street at a time, and to avoid tearing up the same streets many times over and unnecessarily inconveniencing businesses and residents, the most effective approach is generally to include both the city and private utility work under the city’s own construction contracts.
Since 2004, there has been a common-sense “joint bidding” law on the books that enables New York City to manage the “spaghetti.” Enacted in the aftermath of 9/11 when Lower Manhattan — home to some of the most complicated utility interferences throughout the five boroughs — needed to be rebuilt effectively and quickly, the law simply allows the city to bid its own work and the private utility work in the same city construction contract, with the cost of the private utility work borne by the utilities themselves as noted.
The joint bidding law has been extended multiple times since this initial authorization, often for 10 years. Opposition from a small group of contractors in 2024 led Albany to grant a one-year extension that will sunset at the end of 2025 unless reauthorized.
With the clock ticking on the 2025 Albany legislative session, the city needs a 10-year extension of the joint bidding law now before it’s too late. For the past nine months, the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC), the city’s chief capital project management agency, has met the request of Albany legislators by leading dozens of meetings with contractors, industry associations, and private utilities to negotiate a fair and transparent approach to the program.
The new approach, based on open competitive bidding for both private and public utility work and contract terms that hold all parties accountable with a level playing field, will allow the city to achieve years of time savings while compensating contractors fairly for the cost of the work. But it’s not set in stone: the broad authorization provided by the joint bidding law allows DDC to continuously refine the program based on data and input from contractors and utilities and real numbers in responses to construction contract bids.
DDC has updated contracts in response to feedback from each of the parties and is committed to continuing the dialogue in the months and years to come.
Albany must act to keep this common-sense law on the books for at least 10 years. As a city with a multi-billion dollar 10-year capital plan, we need the long-term extension in order to effectively plan, and predict costs and project impacts. Without joint bidding, New York City’s most critical infrastructure projects will take years longer to complete — with streets sitting open, residents and businesses unserved, and badly needed upgrades incomplete.
As public works become more complex and urgent, we need the tools to build better, faster, and cheaper. Failing to extend the vital joint bidding law for 10 years will take us backward.
Foley is the commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction.
