The brand-new Hudson Yards subway station has turned into the city’s largest water park — with the $2.4 billion 7-train terminus plagued by mold, leaks, flooded bathrooms and water damage that has shut nearly half the escalators.
The Hell’s Kitchen terminus has been open for just seven months, but due to flaws in its design and construction, it already has as many problems as much older stops in the MTA’s decaying subway system.
“They f- -ked up,” declared Louie Berkey, a plumber from Staten Island who said he saw right away that the work on the station was shoddy. “They didn’t install the ceiling here right. It’s not waterproof.”
Riders at the station can look up and see brown mold and drops seeping out of the ceiling, including right over the escalators.
The bathrooms are closed until further notice, and two of the five escalators have been out of commission since last month. The working escalators are often covered with water and slippery.
“During rush hour, it’s too much with two of the escalators not working. It’s always dripping, too. They were covered in ice when it was snowing, and people were slipping,” said Mannie Rivera of The Bronx. “I don’t know how they spent all that money with all these issues.”
A station agent said he had no idea when the bathrooms would be back in service. “The problem is there’s water leaking from the street, and it’s flooding the bathrooms,” he said.
Yonkers Contracting Co., which performed the excavation and structural work on the station, now has to hire a specialty grouting subcontractor to fix it.
Yonkers Contracting will foot the bill, said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.
He said, though, that he did not know when the work would be completed. Yonkers Contracting did not return calls for comment.
For now, the station will continue to disgust riders.
“It’s an eyesore. It’s like you’re seeing something with a Band-Aid on it. If it’s brand new, why do you need a Band-Aid on it?” asked Carlos Pereira of The Bronx. “Being brand new, it’s like when you buy a new car, you don’t want a recall on it. You can’t recall a station!”