By Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The 7 line’s expansion to the West Side is already running over budget, the Daily News reported Wednesday.
Costs are “trending above” the original $2.1 billion estimate, according to a report from the engineering firm that was hired by the MTA to estimate the cost of the project, the News reported. The firm has not yet determined the size of the deficit, the paper noted.
"The MTA is looking at a project no one has the money to complete," State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky told the News. "The city’s broke. The state’s broke. The MTA's broke."
The MTA moved ahead with the expansion — which will extend the 7 train from Times Square to the Javits Center at 34th Street and 11th Avenue — in 2006 after the Bloomberg administration agreed to pay the project's $2.1 billion price tag to help spur development on the far West Side.
But city and transit officials never agreed on whom to assign the cost overruns, the News reported.
"If it becomes clear at some point that overruns are unavoidable, we'll address how they would be covered then," Bloomberg spokesman Andrew Brent told the paper.
The MTA will conduct another “risk assessment” to determine whether the project will run over its $2.1 billion cost, an agency spokesman told the News. Until then, the project officially remains on budget, he added.
