Each and every day, New York’s subway lines move millions of residents and visitors between hundreds of stations across all five boroughs, like a giant urban vascular system carrying the lifeblood of the city. To safeguard the health of this vital public resource, and with a goal of improving the user experience, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Enhanced Station Initiative (ESI) was launched in February 2016. Led by the New York City Transit Authority (NYCT), the program is a historic investment in MTA infrastructure.

As the ESI’s Program Facilitator, we worked hand-in-hand with NYCT, providing multidisciplinary services to define and deliver the program. From a single, dedicated project office, Arup developed bridging and bid documents and oversaw architectural and engineering design, scheduling, cost, construction packaging, and procurement of the entire program.

This initiative included the modernization of 22 stations, some of which had been in operation for more than a century. The updated stations are better equipped to meet the challenges of climate change and increasing ridership.

Minimizing disruption to service

The ESI was a massive undertaking, requiring the execution of multiple, concurrent projects at numerous locations throughout the city. To ensure quality while also promoting cost savings, an aggressive schedule, and efficiency, Arup helped NYCT to divide the work into nine construction contracts, eight of which utilized the design-build method. Under this procurement model, each firm awarded a contract was responsible for satisfying the client’s design excellence criteria and meeting all schedule, cost, and performance targets.

ESI upgrades necessitated either full or partial closure of up to 22 stations, the first time NYCT has utilized full-station closures for station rehabilitation work. To help NYCT keep these closures from exceeding six months, Arup designed a carefully sequenced, highly coordinated schedule, including bid document development, procurement, design, and construction. This involved collaborating closely with NYCT to sync the closures required under the program with other planned closures within the network to minimize disruptions to service.

Exterior of 36th Avenue Station in New York City

The Enhanced Station Initiative is a historic investment in MTA infrastructure

Interior of New York City subway station with tiled art of palm trees

Artwork adds a refined feel to the subway stations

Interior of 86th Street Station in New York City

Wayfinding and digital displays help improve the passenger experience

Digital Dashboard

To enhance coordination, Arup’s Digital Insights team developed a Digital Dashboard using a web-based platform that united a wide array of project resources under one umbrella, making them easily accessible to the entire team.

The Digital Dashboard’s features include:

  • Design features: expedited the site investigation and design process by offering time-saving tools, such as 360° panoramic site photos and LIDAR models
  • A shared calendar: facilitated scheduling and transparency by making the project calendar available to all
  • Interactive mapping: provided searchable, filterable maps to quickly find information
  • A project schedule: allowed team members to view concurrent project schedules
  • Contacts: enabled one-click email or phone access to all team members to foster open communication
  • A document management system: provided a library of downloadable, version-controlled project documents, ranging from project reports, to meeting notes, to ESI compiled bid documents
  • RFI tracker capable: showed users the number of open RFIs, the details of each, and response time.

By merging data from programs including Microsoft Outlook, Primavera, and ProjectWise onto one, user-friendly platform, the Digital Dashboard helped reduce common issues, such as communication bottlenecks, lack of coordination, and version control. The MTA found the product so useful that the agency commissioned Arup to create an in-house version to help them manage on-going work.

Building on lessons learned from this experience, Arup also synthesized available station data (including information on planned works, budget, scale-of-work by station, etc.) to build an algorithm that helps NYCT identify stations most suitable for future phases of station upgrades.