MTA chief knew about Hudson Yards station’s problems earlier

The head of the MTA said Wednesday he could not remember exactly when he learned the new subway station at Hudson Yards on the West Side of Manhattan had a leaking roof and other problems.

“I’m trying to remember,” MTA President and Chief Executive Thomas Prendergast said after the agency’s monthly meeting in Lower Manhattan.

He said some problems might have come to his attention earlier, when he was president of the Transit Authority from 2009 through the end of 2012.

Other problems might have come to his attention since he took over the MTA on Jan. 1, 2013, he said.

The station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue opened in September. It is a gleaming terminal for the $2.4 billion, 1.5 mile extension of the No. 7 line, which had ended at Times Square.

A published report a week ago revealed that the roof leaks badly, and several members of the MTA’s Transit and Bus Committee said at their monthly meeting Monday that they had not been informed of the problems.

“So what I knew and remembered as both the president of transit and now as the chairman and CEO could be distinctly different from what other board members remember,” Prendergast said Wednesday. “And it’s important for me as the CEO and as the chairman to give them the information they need to keep track of it.”

He said a review of the problems at the station by the agency’s independent engineer, which he ordered Monday, should be done within 30 to 60 days.

Published reports about shuttered bathroom and inoperative escalators at the Hudson Yards station were not connected to the leaks, Michael Horodniceanu, president of MTA Capital Construction, said Monday.

He said the bathrooms were closed because of “blockages” that often occur in public facilities, and the escalator that was broken was under warranty and had been fixed.

He said the firm that built the station, Yonkers Contracting, would pay all cost of the roof repair.