MTA Keeps Itself Between A Rock and a Hard Place

If Job had ridden a subway, it would have been built by the MTA.

On Wednesday, the battered Metropolitan Transportation Authority began grappling with a potential cost overrun of more than 200% on a public art project. The artwork is in one of the still uncompleted stations on the as-yet-unused line to Hollywood and could cost taxpayers well above $1 million.

Later in the day, the agency’s cafeteria was closed by county health inspectors because of a cockroach infestation.

But it was the bugs in the budget that most concerned transit officials, who began dealing with a projected $79.1-million cost overrun on the Hollywood leg of the subway project, now expected to cost $1.7 billion.

One focus of their attention was a public artwork--faux boulders suspended from the ceiling at the future subway station at Vermont Avenue and Beverly Boulevard. The cost of fabricating and installing the art project has increased from its original $300,000 budget to $500,000, and MTA officials have set aside an additional $600,000--on top of the higher figure--for the rock work.

MTA construction chief Charles Stark said the taxpayers ultimately may not have to pay the full $600,000, “but when we go through a budgeting process, we are obligated to identify any and all costs that we think we might pay.”

Officials say the cost increase was caused in part by faulty design work. “Mistakes were made,” said Stephen J. Polechronis, deputy executive officer for construction.

Officials, he said, are investigating whether the rocks were drawn upside down on the blueprints. In the topsy-turvy world inhabited by transit authorities, such mistakes are good because they allow the MTA to recoup some of its costs from “errors and omissions” insurance. “It was a very hard thing to build,” Stark told the MTA board’s construction committee Wednesday.

In a motion presented by his staff, MTA board member and Los Angeles Councilman Hal Bernson called for a halt to the art project until it can be determined whether the suspended rocks are seismically safe. But Stark said they were.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, also an MTA board member, said it was important for the board to focus on the larger, multimillion-dollar cost overruns.

“When you’re building major public works project, you might as well make them look good,” he said. “I hate to see us pick apart a $700,000 [the figure the MTA originally cited but changed overnight] item if it’s justified, and not spend the same amount of time picking apart $7-million overruns.”

Indeed, Nick Patsaouras of the MTA construction committee said the subway’s design costs--constituting 20% of the construction budget--were out of line with the industry standard.