Three Metropolitan Transportation Authority agencies – Bridges & Tunnels (B&T), NYC Transit Department of Buses (Transit Bus), and MTA Bus Company (MTA Bus) need to improve their preparations for extreme weather as an audit released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found a lack of maintenance and inspections of resiliency equipment, and a failure to follow weather alert procedures.
“While the MTA has been funding and implementing capital projects that adapt the transportation system to climate change and extreme weather, and developed plans and procedures to activate for extreme weather-related conditions, these plans are only as good as their execution,” DiNapoli said. “This audit identifies areas where MTA needs to improve and ensure bus depots and tunnels are maintained, inspected and prepared for the next weather emergency.”
Superstorm Sandy caused roughly $5 billion in damages to MTA assets, including serious damage to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, and six bus depots in 2012. In its aftermath, B&T and MTA’s bus operating units -- Transit Bus and MTA Bus (Bus Operations) -- both carried out projects to protect against future coastal storms and developed procedures to follow before and in the aftermath of extreme weather.
DiNapoli’s audit found, however, that these agencies have not carried out a systemwide risk assessment — a recommendation of its own Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainability — to help identify the potential for damage to their transportation systems. B&T officials said they did not see a risk and had no plan to do an assessment, although some individual assessments were done along with work to safeguard against extreme weather. Bus Operations officials did not provide a systemwide risk assessment for depots, although some risk review had been done at four depots that had been identified as having flooded in the past.
Inspections and maintenance of flood protection equipment are critical to ensure its availability to protect against future extreme weather, but auditors found that they did not always take place as required or were not recorded. Overall, the audit found that B&T’s lack of regular, timely inspections and maintenance could put its storm mitigation infrastructure at risk.
At two B&T tunnels with 12 flood doors, there was no documentation that the doors had been inspected. During visits, auditors noted broken gasket seals on three doors that could potentially allow water to leak through.
Auditors visited six bus depots where they also found that inspections were not taking place as required. For example, at four depots there should have been 336 inspections of the large trucks used for snow removal over a year and a half, but only 59 were documented. Inspections are necessary to ensure equipment will be working when it’s needed. At two depots, there was also no evidence that employees had been trained to inspect flood mitigation equipment.
Both B&T and Bus Operations have a checklist of procedures and alerts for extreme weather conditions. Auditors chose 10 dates that had extreme weather and found procedures were not always followed. Bus officials said weather on three of the 10 dates was not severe enough to trigger a weather alert. But one of the days, July 10, 2020, was the day Tropical Storm Fay brought gale force winds and 2.31 inches of rain recorded at JFK Airport. Officials took the absence of any emails regarding weather on those three days as evidence that the weather was not adverse. On two of the other seven days — Aug. 21 and Sept. 1, 2021 — bus depots flooded, but there was no record of any alerts or actions to mitigate the weather’s impacts. Officials said that they have ensured that alerts would be issued in the future. The audit also noted that no procedures existed for unusual weather events such as tornadoes or flash flooding.
DiNapoli’s audit offered 13 recommendations including that B&T and Bus Operations update their systemwide risk assessments periodically showing progress and any new issues that need to be addressed; maintain and inspect equipment regularly and as required in a timely manner; and that procedures are adopted to address all weather events including flash floods, flash freezing and tornadoes.
In its response, MTA officials acknowledged the recommendations and in a limited number of cases agreed with all or part of them.