An MTA honcho is worried the Second Avenue subway line won’t be completed on time — because construction crews are simply not showing up for work.
The head of capital construction, Michael Horodniceanu, told the agency’s board on Monday that he popped into one of the massive project’s work sites on Saturday and found it deserted.
“It was obvious that they had no one on the job,” he said. “On the other job, they had about 50 or 60 people working for a couple of shifts. It becomes my job to talk to the contractors about why they didn’t have the appropriate personnel.”
Horodniceanu is scrambling to tie up dozens of odds and ends so that the much-needed line can open on time, and he said that workers not showing up will make the December completion deadline harder to hit.
While Horodniceanu said that he is still confident that the new line will open this year, the MTA’s independent engineer painted a more dire picture, saying inspections are behind schedule.
The agency has only completed 67 percent of the testing and needs to do another 1,100 checks by October.
“It requires an aggressive and unprecedented performance by the combined capital New York City transit test team,” said independent engineer Kent Haggas.