The chairman of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the agency would explore advanced technology to minimize accident risk at track grade crossings.
"Can we use emerging technology? Can we promote better awareness of crossings to provide better protection? All of these issues are on the table," Thomas Prendergast told reporters Wednesday morning after the MTA board's monthly meeting in lower Manhattan.
On Feb. 3, a Metro-North Railroad commuter train collided with a sport utility vehicle in Valhalla, N.Y., north of New York City, killing six passengers and the SUV driver. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident.
Metro-North is a unit of the MTA, a large municipal issuer with about
Earlier Thursday, the authority's safety committee met. MTA formed the committee after a Metro-North crash near Spuyten Duyvil station on the Bronx killed four persons on Dec. 1, 2013.
Prendergast said that while the MTA has twice eliminated grade crossings, it is an expensive undertaking. "The cost is very, very high and we can't do all of them," he said.
The MTA's proposed $32 billion capital plan, which has a $15.2 billion shortfall, is pending the state Capital Program Review Committee.
The authority spent an estimated $85 million to erect a bridge in 1998 at the Herricks Road crossing in Mineola, N.Y., 16 years after a Long Island Rail Road train slammed into a van and killed nine teenagers. MTA also eliminated a grade crossing in New Hyde Park.
Also on Wednesday, the MTA board approved $101.2 million to finish the renovation of the Cortlandt Street No. 1 line subway station, which was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Service on the corridor resumed about a year later, but the station has remained vacant.
The MTA and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had originally undertaken a cost-sharing agreement, but never finalized terms.
"At this time, the respective agencies have agreed that the MTA would be in the best position to coordinate the remainder of station construction," authority officials said in a memo.
The board's finance and transit and bus committees approved the measure two days earlier. The new price tag includes $31.5 million top compensate Judlau Contracting Inc. for advancing the project.
"We're now at a point where we're very much delayed," said MTA Capital Construction president Michael Horodniceanu.
The MTA hopes to coordinate the Cortland Street reopening with the Port Authority's expected 2018 opening of the new World Trade Center transportation hub, intended to connect the Port Authority Trans-Hudson PATH commuter rail line with 11 subway lines.
Alternatives such as letting Port Authority finish the work or soliciting new bids would have delayed the work further, said MTA officials.
Complicating the original agreement were several concurrent infrastructure improvements and competing developments within the World Trade Center site. The station runs directly underneath the new World Trade Center memorial.
The contract includes the remaining $69.7 million of station work. The current MTA 2010 to 2014 capital plan contains $110 million for this project with an additional $44.4 million in its proposed 2015-2019 program.
