The Experts and Thelma’s Plight

In the interest of fairness to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, let’s start with the disclaimers regarding efforts to dig twin tunnels deep below the Cahuenga Pass, on the subway route from Studio City to Hollywood.

One of the MTA’s many consultants, for example, says that the problems encountered so far have been “unexpected, but not unheard of.” Also, the construction troubles described in inspection reports during June have been referred to by MTA advisors as having been no more serious than a “flat tire” at the start of a long auto trip.

Maybe so. But did workers have to tempt fate by naming the two tunnel-boring machines Thelma and Louise?

Poor Thelma hasn’t worked since the Fourth of July weekend, when she got stuck in “squeezing ground” within a shear zone of heavily faulted, crushed shale. That was the “unexpected” part. The machine might have been fired up again by now had a large slab of rock not fallen on it this past weekend.

What’s happening? That little “flat tire” reference helps here. Inspection reports filed by management consultants in June found that the tunnel had been shrinking and suffering small cave-ins as Thelma inched forward. Installing steel ribs to support the tunnel had become very difficult. That might have been regarded as a warning, but it apparently was not.

Now a 2.3-mile tunneling project that was already running 51 days late and $4.3 million over budget as of June 28 is behind further still. And those figures derive from monthly reports from the federal government, which is paying for 50% of subway construction here.

Why should it matter to taxpayers? Well, we pay every penny of increased costs. And we should expect more from the incredible layers of MTA and federal advisors and consultants here. What are they doing? It was incumbent on some (probably highly paid) official to look into this oversized sandbox and suggest, in June, that Johnny was about to lose the use of his shovel.

Expect to hear a familiar refrain from MTA supporters now, something about how everyone focuses on the negative and blows matters out of proportion. It’s not about that. It’s about having reasonable expectations of on-time, at-budget performance, and why that seems to happen so rarely on the Los Angeles subway project.