Maybe it's just as well those new Red Line trains are late: Upgrade of the yard where they'd be maintained is delayed and mired in lawsuits

A $214-million revamp of the Red Line's Cabot Yard in South Boston that was originally scheduled for completion this past February is now as delayed as the snazzy new subway cars it was supposed to maintain, with no lead contractor in place but a growing number of lawsuits swirling around it.

The MBTA today filed the latest lawsuit related to a project meant to bring the 1970s-era yard into the 21st century, against several insurance and financial companies it says have failed their obligations to help the T recover its losses and get the project back on track.

In its suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, the T says it wants the five companies, including local Liberty Mutual, to make good on the $214-million performance bond taken out by LMH Lane - a joint venture of the Lane Construction Co. of Cheshire, CT, LM Heavy Civil Construction of Quincy and LM's parent, an Italian construction company. The T says problems caused by the contractors could mean overruns of as much as $100 million.

In June, 2018, LMH-Lane was the low bidder on the project, with the goal of updating Cabot Yard with new tracks, signals, power systems and maintenance facilities to handle the maintenance for the 252 new Red Line cars that were supposed to be flowing into town from a Springfield assembly plant by now, but which mostly aren't.

LMH-Lane began work on Aug. 18, 2018, with its contract calling for the project to be substantially complete in 1,340 days - roughly three years, seven months, or this past February. On June 29, though, the T reported the project was only about a third done. It now estimates completion sometime next summer.

Although the complaint was filed against the insurance companies, much of the document details the MBTA's problems with the joint venture - in part to show that the insurers knew about the problems for a long time and have no excuse not to help the T pick up the pieces - and added costs - of the delayed work

In its complaint, the T says the joint venture and its work fell apart after LM's Italian parent became insolvent in 2019 - and that the Italian company actually began taking equipment from the site and hiring away the key personnel that its Connecticut partner was trying to keep on site to keep the project going before it too began to basically phone things in and stop meeting deadlines or keep the T apprised of an ever mounting pile of problems. In the complaint, the T charges:

By the end of 2021, the Project was significantly delayed, and LMH-Lane was responsible for at least 521 days of unexcused delays.

Au contraire, the faults lie entirely in the MBTA, the joint venture says in its own lawsuit, which it filed, also in Suffolk Superior Court, in October.

The concern says the T caused an escalating series of delays by failing to obtain required state permits for various phases of the job, including plumbing, construction and environmental work - and just as one state inspector would sign off on one issue, another problem would pop up because of another phase missing the required permit. Plus, the T repeatedly dragged its feet on obtaining the permits even after it was notified they were needed, the company says.

The T compounded things by failing to alert project managers that there were several electrical conduits underneath an existing car barn on the site, which had to then be mapped out and carefully excavated - part of the contract was that Cabot Yard had to be kept operational even as the large project completely overhauled it. And then there was the mercury discovered at Cabot in 2019, which LMH-Lane says the T never told it about.

The T replies it did so "timely" apply for all the required permits and:

The Contract documents instructed LMH-Lane to expect to encounter mercury related to equipment and stated that hazardous materials may be present in sediments.

Then there was a Sept. 21, 2021 safety incident, over which the joint venture filed a separate suit against the MBTA, not for damages per se, but because the T refused to turn over video from several cameras to the joint venture's lawyers, even after the Secretary of State's office ruled the videos were public records that had to be released.

The suit does not specify what happened that day that might benefit from video from four separate cameras, but in its suit today, the MBTA says its contract with the joint venture includes provisions that the contractor's employees have to get up to speed on the unique safety requirements of working in an active subway yard.

[T]he MBTA required LMH-Lane personnel to participate in a day-long right-of-way training course that addressed safety practices and requirements when working in or near a right of way. This training also included reporting requirements when someone has a safety concern.

In addition to these three suits, LMH-Lane is suing an engineering firm the MBTA hired to work on the project, related to the permitting issues and to unexpected problems found in various conduits under the site. A subcontractor hired to install a train-washing station is suing LMH-Lane for not paying it the costs of shutting down the project as things ground to a halt, while LMH-Lane is suing another contractor over arbitration for what was supposed to be a $60-million electrical contract.

MBTA complaint against insurers (16.6M PDF)
LMH-Lane's complaint against the MBTA (800k PDF).
LMH-Lane's complaint against Mass. Electric Construction (6.3M PDF).
LMH-Lane's complaint against HNTB (81k PDF).
LMH-Lanes's complaint over videos (959k PDF).
NS Corp.'s complaint against LMH-Lane and the insurance companies (126k PDF).