MTA Board Votes to Replace Hollywood Subway Builder

Declaring that “enough is enough,” transit officials Wednesday voted to go ahead and replace the firm building the Hollywood leg of the troubled subway project and divide the remaining tunnel work among other contractors.

But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, citing the potential for a public backlash, rejected a staff recommendation to offer a piece of the work to two of the firms fired from the job.

The staff had recommended that Kiewit-Shea be invited to finish the tunnel construction, even though Shea-Kiewit-Kenny had been fired from the job.

“How do you explain that to the public?” asked a chagrined county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member.

“This is why we have so many problems,” added Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, also an MTA board member.

MTA officials explained that under the new arrangement, Shea, while retaining a financial interest, would be removed as managing partner and replaced by Kiewit. Staff also recommended that Kiewit-Shea should be allowed to bid for the work because it would promote competition and possibly reduce the project’s costs.

“The difference between Shea-Kiewit and Kiewit-Shea is the same difference between Abbott and Costello and Costello and Abbott,” said activist John Walsh, a longtime critic of the board.

The board concluded that replacing SKK with some of the three other subway station or tunnel contractors already on the job would be the fastest and least expensive way to finish tunneling.

The board action came as the state Senate Transportation Committee set an Aug. 8 hearing in Los Angeles on the management and operations of the MTA. Committee Chairman Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), at the request of Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), planned to ask the Senate Rules Committee for the power to subpoena witnesses.

It is expected to be at least three months before work resumes on the pair of tunnels under Hollywood Boulevard. Crews must repair the damage caused by a giant sinkhole that caved in a 60- to 80-foot section of tunnel.

The board action came during an unusually civil board meeting, which began with a stern warning from new MTA Chairman Larry Zarian that audience members would be asked to leave by Transit Police if they booed or hissed board members.

Many of the same tunnel workers are expected to remain on the job. “We don’t have any record of any individual culpability on the part of a miner,” said Joseph Drew, MTA deputy executive officer. “We’ve had leadership problems.”

The board voted to go ahead with SKK’s termination, even though a panel of independent experts concluded earlier this week that the firing “makes no sense at all” and will mean “horrendous” costs and delays.

Appearing before the board, John F. Shea, president of J.F. Shea Co., cited the findings by the panel of engineering experts and said, “In constructing the tunnels, we have come across two uncharted underground rivers and worked through unstable geological conditions that MTA geology reports had not predicted.”

Shea noted that the tunnels beneath Vermont Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard are 90% complete and warned that changing contractors will cost the agency “tens of millions of dollars.” The fired contractor is expected to file a lawsuit seeking damages from the MTA. At stake is more than $85 million.