The bids are in for new high-tension switchgear at two of the buildings that power Brooklyn's subway. MTA Construction & Development opened contract P36729 on Nov. 12, 2024 — replacement of the high-tension switchgear at the Avenue C and Baltic Street substations — and seven contractors priced it. The apparent low: T. Moriarty & Son, Inc., a Brooklyn firm, at $17,327,000. In plain words, the job swaps out the heavy electrical switching gear that stands between the utility grid and the third rail.

Thirty firms pulled the contract documents, by the agency's own plan-holders list. Seven of them turned numbers in, and the tab had real shape to it. TC Electric was next at $20,422,000 — 17.9 percent above the low. RMD Electric came in at $21,450,000 and FOS Development at $21,755,000. ExterNetworks priced the work at $24,600,450, L.K. Comstock at $24,722,000, and Forte Construction topped out at $27,339,000. Seven bidders on specialized traction-power work is a healthy field. A low number sitting that far under everyone else means Moriarty either saw a cleaner path through the job or wanted it more.

The contract documents spell out exactly what Moriarty signed up for. At Avenue C: a new 26,400-volt high-tension switchgear line, a new battery system, and a rebuilt control box wired by new cable to the Caton Substation next door. At Baltic Street: a bigger swap — a new 38,000-volt switchgear with a draw-out circuit breaker, new sensors that shut the room down automatically if water gets in, and new door sensors, both reporting back to the transit system's central control room. The equipment line-up coming out at Baltic Street carries asbestos. MTA Construction & Development is handling that abatement itself, on its own separate contract — Moriarty's crew works around it, not through it. High-tension means the incoming utility side — the hottest gear in the building, and the gear this contract replaces at both locations.

Nobody rides a substation, but everybody rides on one. State capital-dashboard data for the MTA's 2020-2024 plan maps this switchgear-replacement line item to two points — one in Kensington, one in Boerum Hill — right where these buildings stand, on the F line's Culver corridor. The contract itself confirms the line: Moriarty can't request a track outage at Avenue C without coordinating it with a separate signal-system rehab running between Church Avenue and West 8th Street stations, until that project wraps. When switchgear does its job, no rider ever thinks about it. When it fails, trains stop where they are. Swapping this gear on the agency's schedule, instead of after a failure, is what buys the reliability riders never see.

The clock and the penalties are both spelled out. MTA C&D gave Moriarty 639 days from notice-to-proceed to reach substantial completion, then another 180 days to close the job out — call it roughly two and a half years, start to finish. Miss the first date and it's $10,000 a day. Hand a track back late after a scheduled weekend outage and it's $10,000 for the first hour, then $10,000 for every hour after that. The work also can't start tearing into Avenue C until a separate MTA contract finishes upgrading the Seeley Street substation next door, which feeds some of the same equipment.

One clarification from the bidding stage is worth flagging for any shop pricing an MTA power job like this one: when a prospective bidder asked whether National Grid would handle all the gas-main work at the site, the agency wouldn't confirm it. The contract drawings put gas-main removal and relocation inside the contractor's own scope — not just the trench excavation and restoration around it. Read the drawings, not the assumption.

The standing caveat: an apparent low is not an award. The tab goes under review before anyone signs anything. In this case the review didn't drag — MTA C&D's 2024 award log lists P36729 going to Moriarty on Dec. 26, 2024, with 15 percent MBE, 15 percent WBE and 6 percent SDVOB participation goals on the contract. Certified subs should read those goals as a door.

For the trade, the bigger point: substation renewal is standing work. The switchgear at Avenue C and Baltic Street is one line item in a power program that runs through every MTA capital plan, and the shops that learn this niche stay busy plan after plan.