The MTA has two nine-figure contracts closing within two weeks of each other, and together they show where the authority is putting its structural dollars this fall: underneath a bridge and inside a 115-year-old terminal.
MTA Bridges & Tunnels is taking bids until October 27 on a design-build contract to relocate a 13kV substation at the RFK Bridge, with a published estimate of $50 million, according to the agency's own solicitation (RFI-000047). Design-build means one team carries both the engineering and the construction — no separate architect-then-contractor handoff — which is standard on B&T's bigger electrical work because it compresses a schedule that would otherwise run through two separate procurements.
Two weeks later, on November 10, MTA Construction & Development closes bidding on leak remediation and renewal work at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, estimated between $50 million and $100 million (RFI-003181). Atlantic Terminal is one of the busiest rail hubs in the borough, serving the Long Island Rail Road and multiple subway lines, and leak remediation on a structure its age typically means waterproofing membranes, drainage repair, and masonry or concrete restoration below street level — work that has to happen without shutting down a terminal that doesn't stop moving people.
Both contracts sit inside the same capital push that produced the $1.9 billion A/C line signal project the MTA broke ground on this month — Bridges & Tunnels and Construction & Development are both drawing on the authority's current five-year capital plan, and both jobs are large enough that only firms with existing MTA design-build or heavy-civil bonding capacity will realistically compete.
Neither contract has a results posting yet. The RFK substation job is a design-build procurement, which typically means a technical proposal stage runs before price is opened — so a low bidder may not surface publicly for months even after the October 27 date closes.