Mayor Bill de Blasio's plans to build the city's most ambitious fast bus service in southeastern Queens have grown a good deal more expensive than anticipated.
The project once was estimated to cost $200 million but now is expected to cost $400 million, according to Polly Trottenberg, de Blasio's transportation commissioner, who testified on Wednesday before the New York City Council.
As planners worked through the design options, “The price tag for the project grew very large — $400 million — and the timeline grew very long, basically ... into the middle of the next decade," she said.
(The original project was supposed to start construction in 2017 and last a year, according to a 2015 report in the Daily News.)
As has previously been reported, the city now plans to implement the project in phases, beginning with operational improvements like off-board fare payment and concluding, in the second phase, with actual construction.
15 comments:
What idiots come up with these figures? They are always claiming that everything is going to go over what they anticipated.....remember the 2nd avenue subway line that kept needing more and more money to build? Why don't they just always double what they expect something to cost to begin with that way they can budget money properly?
Shouldn't construction and infrastructure precede payment processes?
Shoddy business as usual.
Don't buses already run along these routes, without an extra $400M having to be paid by taxpayers?
Can you say ONE BILLION???
SOLD, to the most wonderful mayor on the planet...
$400 mil? I didn't know that they were giving residents private jets.
They should abandon this endeavor and focus on opening the tracks running parallel to Woodhaven Blvd as a subway extension into the Queens Blvd line from the Rockaways. Environmentally better, efficient and capacity can grow. The cost is probably going to be the same per rider.
Cost and scheduling overruns... should anyone be surprised?
It's a shame necessary transit solutions cost so much, and are so prone to ridiculous vanity projects like Occulus and the Brooklyn streetcar.
I would call that southwestern Queens.
A half a billion dollars to install some bus lane signs and paint "bus only" on the street? I know that some money is always lost on a project due to corruption and payoffs but that is just absurd.
The city is one corrupt money machine for the well connected. It is so obvious and so out in the open.
This is a stupid liberal plan. Almost everyone hates it - civics, woodhaven businesses, the queens chronicle, the queens rail advocates ... Support these institutions and help them defeat this plan!!!!!
It would be cheaper to build a monorail system over Woodhaven Blvd.
It's quite ironic that this route, though shorter, resembles the imbecilic plan for the light rail developer and tourist welfare plan. If not also for it's not so shocking budget result.
Even though I also want that rail-line revived by 99/100 st. in Ozone Park, it has sicken me since youth to see that fester and decay with all those filthy chop shops and shuttered metal gates, it's not going to happen despite support by an actual official in Phil Goldfeder. Mario's son has already put the wheels in motion for a goddamn we(a)l(th)fare high line to please his developer overseers.
An old perfume company's ad slogan:
"Promise her anything, but give her Arpege".
That's big Bill's MO.
Promise Queens everything "grand" but deliver overpriced shit....if that's even possible.
LOL!
And that trolley line linking Brooklyn with LIC?
Lot's of luck! If it ever gets built, it will come in at tripple the original estimate.
You have elected an all show and no blow mentally challenged mayor.
Or, is it the voters who are mentally challenged here?
If the projected cost doubles just to put more buses on the street, imagine how expensive the streetcar boondoggle will get.
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