NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Gov. Kathy Hochul and other MTA officials took a commemorative first ride on a Long Island Rail Road train to Grand Central Terminal.
The ride highlighted progress on the long-delayed and drastically overbudget East Side Access project to bring LIRR service to Grand Central. The monumental project to improve rail service connections is slated to wrap up by the end of 2022 at a cost of $11 billion.
"The East Side Access concourse is a model for modern transportation systems as we look to the post-pandemic future," Governor Hochul said. "As the first modern train terminal to be built in more than a half-century, the East Side Access concourse will expand rail service, cut down on travel times into East Manhattan from Queens and Long Island, and reduce crowding.”
The MTA on Sunday released video of the officials on the ride as well as time-lapse footage of the trip to the new terminal.
The project began back in 2007 with a budget of $3.5 billion and was delayed, in part, due to shifting priorities to address damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The concept of an LIRR terminal in Grand Central had been pushed for decades.
The project over the years has become the shining example of public construction ineptitude in New York City. East Side Access was a focus of a major New York Times investigation back in 2017 that called the project the “most expensive subway mile on Earth” and found that hundreds of workers hired for the project had no official title.
Hochul, who has assumed the project from disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, praised the workers who continued progress through the coronavirus pandemic.
“The whole focus of this — and [it] will be the hallmark of my administration going forward — is to identify infrastructure projects that need to be accomplished to make the customer experience extraordinary,” Hochul said.
She credited MTA acting chief Janno Lieber for speeding up construction when he took responsibility for the project three years ago.
“When I was asked to take a look at this job, it was behind schedule and having real budget problems. Every time a review had been done to this project a new schedule had been sent,” Lieber said. “But that didn’t happen this time. We doubled down and said, ‘No, no, we’re going to stick to the schedule — 2022.’”