MTA greenlights $250M for consultants to expand Second Avenue subway — at expected cost of $4.3B per mile to build

The MTA’s spending is like a runaway train.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board rubber-stamped nearly $250 million Wednesday for consultants in its already colossally pricey, long-delayed Second Avenue subway extension.

The mega-plan’s Phase Two to grow the Q line by 1.8 miles on the Upper East Side is expected to cost $7.7 billion — or an eye-watering roughly $4.3 billion per mile — making it one of the costliest subway projects in the world.

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The lavish outlay comes as MTA officials plead poverty while pursuing an entirely separate, bank-breaking $68.4 billion capital plan for 2025-29.

Transit agency bigs have warned that New Yorkers are in for sparred with President Trump over the need to gouge drivers with $9 congestion pricing tolls to pay for subway improvements.

Legions of MTA critics, such as state Sen. James Skoufis (D-Orange County), have argued the transit agency’s spending on projects is simply out of control.

“The MTA spends taxpayer dollars with reckless disregard — then turns around and asks the Legislature to bail them out every year,” Skoufis said Wednesday.

Big Apple leaders for nearly 100 years eyed a Second Avenue subway line on Manhattan’s East Side, but it only started becoming a reality in 2007, with the groundbreaking on Phase One of the project.

It took 10 years, however, for that first extension — which added three stops on the Q line between 63rd Street to 96th Street — to become a reality, finally ending in 2017.

The first phase cost $4.45 billion — a per-mile cost of roughly $2.5 billion.

The Second Avenue subway extension’s Phase Two will grow the Q line from 96th Street to to East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, adding three new stations along the way.

The total construction cost for the second phase is projected to be $6.9 billion, with another $700 million coming from “financing costs,” an MTA rep told The Post.

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Roughly half the project’s cost — $3.4 billion — will be paid by a grant awarded by the Biden administration, although the funds have yet to be appropriated, officials said.

MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber defended the project’s price tag, arguing the New York City subway carries as many people as the entire US aviation system every day.

“Nobody complains that the the federal government pays a ton for to run the air traffic control system, or that it pays a ton to invest in airports when it carries on a daily basis fewer people than the New York City subway system,” he told The Post.

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MTA board members at their meeting earlier Wednesday unanimously approved two pieces of spending on consultants for Phase Two of the Second Avenue project:

• A $186 million contract with AECOM and HNTB, two of New York’s largest infrastructure consulting firms, to oversee Phase Two.
• $60 million toward engineering and design firms STV Inc. and WSP USA Inc. Those firms’ total design services contract for the project has now ballooned to $255 million, up from the original $120 million, records show.

Lieber defended hiring consultants as “efficient” for “big projects” such as the Second Avenue subway, arguing the MTA would otherwise have to temporarily hire and fire in-house employees.

But Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen blasted the $186 million consultant contract as part of the problem.

“Save money? Baloney,” he said. “This is Janno’s profit-making consultant contractor swamp.”

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The funds should instead be “invested in the workforce to move the MTA forward,” Samuelsen said, claiming that Lieber has “deliberately diminished the in-house capacity and created this swamp of outside contractors.”

Pricey consultants have been blamed for much of the massive cost for the subway’s first phase.

The MTA spent $656 million on consultants to design and engineer that phase, or twice as much as it cost to actually dig the subway tunnel, researchers at NYU found in a 2023 study.

The beginning phase cost was between eight and 12 times more expensive than comparable projects in Italy, Istanbul and Sweden, the study found.

MTA officials such as Lieber have argued a better measure of project’s cost effectiveness is looking how much it costs per rider.

The Second Avenue subway project’s per-rider cost is estimated at $62,500 for Phase Two, in the middle of the pack worldwide, officials contended.

John Kaehny, executive director of government accountability group Reinvent Albany, argued the MTA’s highest priority should be replacing the subway system’s 100-year-old electrical systems and signals.

He did defend the $186 million contract as “reasonable” because it’s aimed at cutting down the overall cost.

“There were billions in cost overruns for the first leg of the Second Avenue subway and LIRR East Side Access,” he said. “They were disasters.”

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Some Big Apple subway riders along the Q line Wednesday said they still don’t understand the sky-high costs.

“The stations are nice, and I know that costs money, but it doesn’t cost $3 billion,” said medical tech Luis Correia, 41, of East Harlem.

“I’m like a lot of people who use this line – we’re excited by the extension because I live in East Harlem and it will save me a lot of time in my commute every day. But the fact that the fare keeps going up because the MTA is spending hundreds of millions to pay off unions or whatever they’re doing is really aggravating.”

Peter Pagnotto, 49, an Upper Side East resident, said he favors expanding the Q line, but the cost arguably cancels out the benefits.

“You feel like you’re being suckered,” he said. “I just feel like this MTA and all these agencies involved with these kinds of projects are all deadlocked and it’s impossible to fix them because they’re too big. I’m honestly amazed that they’re even able to handle making a phase two, with all their problems.” 

— Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton