Interborough Express Light Rail Program
Test pit investigation and traffic control program supporting general engineering services for one of the most significant new transit corridors in the Northeast.
Executing test pits across an active urban corridor shared with NYCT, MTA, NYAR, and CSX operations.
The Interborough Express is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's first new light rail program in a generation — repurposing an active freight corridor to connect Brooklyn and Queens through neighborhoods the existing transit system underserves. Field investigation had to deliver design-grade data without disrupting any of the operations already running through that ROW.
The corridor carries live freight under NYAR and CSX, sits adjacent to NYCT and MTA infrastructure, and crosses NYCDOT right-of-way at multiple points. Every pit location had to clear coordination with all four parties before equipment could move. Subsurface conditions varied across the program — utilities, legacy foundations, and shifting soil profiles — and traffic control had to engineer around some of the busiest streets in Brooklyn and Queens.
The standard wasn't just safe execution. It was clean execution: zero stoppages, zero violations, zero strikes — and full documentation of every pit, every shift, every closure.
Coordinate every party. Execute under MPT discipline. Document everything.
Seylone executed the test pit program across Brooklyn and Queens with traffic control and maintenance of protection (MPT) engineered around NYCDOT-approved plans. Every work window was sequenced through agency clearances — NYCDOT for the streets, NYCT and MTA for the transit adjacency, NYAR and CSX for the active freight corridor.
Subsurface conditions were managed in stride: live utilities exposed safely, legacy foundations documented, variable soil profiles handled without rework. Heavy equipment moved through congested urban footprints under controlled mobilization, with crews staged to keep pedestrian and traffic flow protected at every location.
Daily field reports captured every activity for the JV's record. Backfilling and full restoration followed every pit, executed to MTA and NYCDOT specifications. Site condition behind the work matched site condition in front of it — no exceptions.
Field data delivered. Corridor protected. Program advancing.
The test pit program continues to support the Jacobs / HDR JV's general engineering services on the IBX program. Subsurface data is reaching the design team on the cadence the program requires, and traffic control execution has moved through NYCDOT, NYCT/MTA, NYAR, and CSX windows without incident.
On a corridor of this complexity and visibility, the absence of a violation, a stoppage, or a strike is itself the deliverable.
The engagement positions Seylone as the field services backbone on one of the most operationally demanding transit programs in the Northeast.
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