MTA Hires $300M Consultants But Opts for Free L Train Advice

Two consultants who played key roles in planning for the L train tunnel shutdown have scored hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative MTA contracts, an I-Team investigation has found. But just because the MTA is paying big bucks for expert advice doesn’t mean the transit agency is taking it. For the past two years, WSP and Jacobs Engineering, a pair of civil engineering giants, have counseled the MTA to embark on a 15-month closure of the tunnel that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn on the L subway line. According to a “Final Constructability Review” authored by Jacobs in 2016, “full tunnel closure” was “the preferred approach” to repair tunnel infrastructure damaged by Sandy.