MTA chairman Janno Lieber: East Side Access opening held up by exhaust fan

The head of the MTA acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the transit agency may miss its longtime goal of running Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal by the end of this year.

And an exhaust fan is to blame.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Janno Lieber, at the MTA’s final board meeting of 2022, reiterated plans to launch LIRR service to Grand Central with a shuttle train to and from Jamaica. But, Lieber acknowledged, it is now unclear whether that service will begin “in the last few days of this year, or in early January.”

After 15 years of construction on the $11.1 billion East Side Access megaproject, Lieber said everything is in place to open the 700,000 square-foot, state of the art transit facility — “with one exception.”

Two vents on the ceiling of the station’s new customer concourse, which stretches from 43rd Street to 48th Street below Madison Avenue, “don’t seem to be pulling enough air to satisfy one test,” according to Lieber.

The underperforming exhaust fan is holding up the entire project, which has been in various stages of planning since the 1960s.

The massive effort, which was once projected to be finished by 2009 at a cost of $4.3 billion, has encountered numerous delays and cost overruns. But, upon taking over the project about five years ago, Lieber vowed that the 2022 completion date was "absolutely written in stone."

Lieber acknowledged that the MTA is “at the end of the road in terms of the 2022” date, and said he doesn’t believe the new station will open by the end of this week. The MTA should know “in a day or so, whether we have a shot” of launching the new service sometime next week.

Despite the latest setback, Lieber defended his insistence on keeping the 2022 target date, saying it helped create a “culture of accountability for budget and schedule” at the MTA.

“I said to the consultants, the days when you just worked on a project, and if it went long, you just got paid more, are over,” Lieber said. 

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.