Bids opened November 29, 2023 at MTA Construction & Development on contract C34938, and the tab came with a hole in the middle. Five bidders priced the package: structural repairs at the 9th Avenue station plus rehabilitating and repainting the West End Line elevated structure from the 9th Avenue portal to Stillwell Terminal in Brooklyn. El Sol Contracting/ES II Enterprises JV was the apparent low at $218,965,421.

Nobody else was in the neighborhood. CAC Industries came second at $337,303,461 — 54 percent above the low. Judlau Contracting bid $343,545,016, Ahern Painting Contractors bid $352,728,155, and Tully Construction topped the tab at $394,492,000. Four bidders told one story about what this job costs and packed in tight to tell it; one bidder told a very different story. Five bidders on a nine-figure el package is a normal showing — bonding, containment rigging and live-track logistics thin this field long before bid day.

What the low number signed up for, per the agency's own solicitation notice: at 9th Avenue, track slab replacement, new track and traction power, signal work, plumbing, spall and crack repairs — patching busted concrete — plus waterproofing and structural fixes. Along the el, surface prep and a full repaint, worked from temporary suspended decking with a containment system hung under the structure so blast grit and old paint never reach the street. Add repair and replacement of structural members, and exterior painting of the wayside buildings that sit on the structure. It bid A+B — price and schedule bid together — on a 45-month term, 100 percent MTA money, with 15 percent MBE, 15 percent WBE and 6 percent SDVOB participation goals. The advertised estimate range said only "over $100 million."

This is the D train's spine through southern Brooklyn. The West End el carries the D out of the tunnel at the 9th Avenue portal and over the streets of Borough Park, Bensonhurst and Bath Beach — Fort Hamilton Parkway, 50th Street, 55th, 62nd, 71st, 79th, 18th Avenue, 20th Avenue, Bay Parkway, 25th Avenue, Bay 50th — down to the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue terminal, where it meets the F, N and Q. Every elevated station on that list rides on the steel this contract was written to keep sound. Paint on an el is not decoration; it is what stands between old riveted steel and the weather, and the containment work is what keeps the job off the sidewalks below while it happens.

The standard caveat applied that night — an apparent low is not an award, and a tab with that much daylight in it gets a hard look. The record shows the work went another way. The painting and structural scope came back under a new number, C34938R, with the 9th Avenue station work carved out and re-bid separately as contract A36203. MTA's awards page lists C34938R going to Tully Construction Co. — the high bidder on this 2023 tab — on June 18, 2026, at $304,567,450.

Note where that award price landed: above El Sol's 2023 low, below every other 2023 bid, on a slimmed-down scope. The pack priced this work closer to what the MTA eventually paid than the outlier did. When one bid sits 54 percent under the field on a job this size, the field is usually the better guide.

MTA's own contract solicitation notice for this job, issued August 30, 2023, set the original bid opening for October 12. That's not the date on this tab: the job wasn't bid until November 29, 48 days later. Extensions like that aren't unusual on a nine-figure el package with this much technical spec to price, but a moved bid date is real information for a reader following this job, not a footnote to skip.