New York, NY —

A new South Ferry subway station opened yesterday, allowing riders from all 10 cars of a subway train to disembark at the southern end of the number 1 line. WNYC's Matthew Schuerman reports that the MTA is taking responsibility for an engineering mistake that delayed the station's opening by two months.

REPORTER: Just days before the planned opening in January, the MTA discovered the gap between the trains and the platform measured up to four inches. That exceeded federal regulations by an inch. The head of the MTA's capital construction division, Michael Horodniceanu, says the authority's design guidelines didn't take into account the curve of the platform.

HORODNICEANU: The standards that we had were for a straight-line station or a station that is in a very slight curve and this was more than that.

REPORTER: The MTA built an extra two inches on to the platform, knowing that some of it will rub off as trains come into and out of the station. The materials and in-house labor cost an extra $150,000. Horodniceanu says for a $530 million project, it's a minor mistake. For WNYC, I'm Matthew Schuerman.