Residents on the West Side are charging that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Bloomberg administration are proceeding irresponsibly with the planned 1.5-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line by starting the project before settling numerous lingering financial questions.

Manhattan’s Community Board 4, the land use-savvy group that helped defeat the West Side stadium plan in 2005, sent a letter earlier this month to the MTA and the city outlining concerns about the finances of the project, particularly its potential for large overruns. The project has a budget of $2.1 billion; a $1.1 billion tunneling contract has already been awarded; and the community board feels overruns are inevitable given that the stated project budget hasn’t changed since 2003.

The letter comes on the heels of the announcement last month by the MTA that plans for a grand entrance at the Fulton Street Transit Center downtown will be scrapped in the name of major cost overruns. The agency received a bid of about $500 million more than was budgeted for the final phase of the Fulton Street project, and has been forced to scale back its plans.  read more »