The Second Ave Subway (SAS) project [Archive]

New Jack City

November 13th, 2005, 02:23 AM

NY POST

2ND AVE.SUBWAY IS BACK ON TRACK

By BILL SANDERSON

November 10, 2005 -- More than 75 years of talk about the Second Avenue Subway is finally leading to action, thanks to voters' approval of the Transportation Bond Act in Tuesday's election.

Shovels will break ground next year on the new subway line's first phase, which will run down Second Avenue from 96th Street to 63rd Street, MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said yesterday.

"It is funded," Kalikow said of the project. "It doesn't get any better than this."

Look for him on the line when it opens in 2012 — right around his 70th birthday.

"I'm going to ride through with my half-fare [senior citizen] MetroCard in the first car," Kalikow said. "You'll see me waving if you're in the stations."

The line's first segment is expected to carry 202,000 daily weekday riders.

The $450 million to be raised via the bond act will help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority garner enough federal money to build the subway's $3.8 billion first phase.

Once the paperwork with the feds is finished, Kalikow said, "We sign that — and we rock and roll."

For several years, MTA planners have been working on preliminary engineering and design of the project.

Kalikow said the agency has even begun talks with construction contractors.

The new section of the subway line will allow the MTA to extend the current Q train uptown from its present terminus at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue to new stations on Second Avenue at 72nd Street, 86th Street and 96th Street.

Ultimately, the Second Avenue Subway will run north to 125th Street and south to Hanover Square in the Financial District.

There's no timetable yet for those parts of the project, which the MTA has estimated will cost another $13 billion.

The agency is optimistic that it will find the money to finish the line, and a map currently on its Web site labels the planned East Side local service as the "T" train.

The Federal Transit Administration recommended last year that the line be built in stages to make it easier for the MTA to secure funds and enable riders to benefit as soon as possible.

Discussion of the Second Avenue Subway began in 1929. The Second Avenue el was torn down in 1942, and the Third Avenue el came down in 1956 — but the promised subway line to replace them never materialized, except four bits of tunnel built in the 1970s.

The project was eventually abandoned because of the city's fiscal crisis in the '70s.

The bond act — which allows the MTA and state Department of Transportation to float nearly $3 billion in bonds — also allows construction to continue on the East Side Access project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal. There's already a tunnel under the East River ready for the connection.

The bond act also includes $100 million for the planning and study of a new rail link between Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan.

The plan is to allow faster travel between Kennedy Airport and the Financial District, but transit watchers believe the project could end up taking other forms — such as extending LIRR service downtown.

Other MTA projects that will be funded by the bond act include $60 million for new subway cars in 2008 and $50 million for new express buses in 2009.

bill.sanderson@nypost.com

3tmk

November 13th, 2005, 02:33 AM

Good News!
But we've been told so often construction will start, that I can't really trust them. It was supposed to have started december 2004, and I doubt they'll keep their deadline.
Still at least they got the money!

TalB

November 16th, 2005, 11:49 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/nyregion/16mta.html
Transit Agency Authorizes Funds for 2nd Avenue Line

By SEWELL CHAN
Published: November 16, 2005

After months of uncertainty about the pace and progress of the Second Avenue subway, a project that seems to be forever on the drawing board, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority intends today to authorize spending $150.4 million for the final design of a first segment, from East 96th to East 63rd Streets.

To be sure, the amount is but a fraction of the estimated $3.8 billion cost of the 2.2-mile segment, which is not projected to be completed until 2012 at the earliest. The entire 8.5-mile line would extend from 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan and cost $16.8 billion.

Still, the decision is the biggest financial affirmation of the authority's support for the project since November 2001, when its board awarded a $200.5 million contract to two engineering companies- Arup, a British company, and the DMJM Harris unit of Aecom - for preliminary engineering and design.

The move comes in the week after New York State voters approved a $2.9 billion transportation bond act that provided $450 million for the Second Avenue subway. The next step for the authority is to approach the Federal Transit Administration for an agreement that would secure support for the project. The authority wants the agency, part of the United States Department of Transportation, to pay about one-third of the total cost.

A subway line under Second Avenue has been an unfulfilled wish since 1929, when it was proposed as a replacement for the Second and Third Avenue elevated lines, which were later demolished. State voters have approved new debt to support the project before, in 1951 and 1967, and tunneling began in 1972. It was halted a few years later by the fiscal crisis.

The project's latest incarnation began in 2000, when the authority pledged $1.05 billion to revive the effort. Planners believe the new line would relieve congestion on the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 lines, which run under Lexington Avenue and are among the most crowded in the system.

To complete the first segment by 2012, the authority will have to move quickly. Officials said yesterday that they hope to award actual construction work by the end of next year - even though the final design could take until 2008 to complete. The biggest task is boring a two-track tunnel.

"We're focused on the first contract, which is the tunnel, and we've got to take it from there," said William M. Wheeler Jr., the authority's planning director. "We've been doing preliminary design for quite some time now. We've taken it to a very significant level."

In a letter to members of the authority's finance and capital construction committees, which gave preliminary approval to the design work yesterday, Mysore L. Nagaraja, the engineer who oversees the authority's biggest construction projects, confirmed that the authority would use a traditional construction procedure, known as design-bid-build.Under the procedure, which has been used for most major infrastructure projects in the last 50 years, the agency draws or commissions exact specifications and then bids the work out to contractors, who execute the plans. The agency is then responsible for any changes resulting from adjustments to the plans, but the changes can be costly.

Mr. Nagaraja's staff earlier considered another procedure, known as design-build, in which the authority and its engineering consultants would have limited themselves to preliminary designs, leaving it to the builder to fulfill a set of general requirements.

The design-build procedure is often faster and more flexible than the traditional method, and is more widely accepted by large construction firms than by small contractors, said Thomas R. Warne, a former executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation and an expert in civil engineering and highway projects.

The authority's decision to use the traditional process will likely mean greater control over the finished product but also runs the risk of cost overruns.

TalB

April 25th, 2006, 09:09 PM

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_154/first2ndave.html
Volume 18 • Issue 49 | April 21 - 27, 2006

First 2nd Ave.stops would connect with Downtown

By Josh Rogers

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_154/map.gif

M.T.A. officials are now planning to begin building the Second Ave. line within the next year and plan to open new stops at 96th, 86th, and 72nd Sts. and connect the new trains to the existing Q train by 2012.

"If the seventh decade proves to be the charm and fruitful work on the Second Ave. subway actually begins soon, Downtowners will get new services in the first phase of the project and will not have to wait yet another decade or two before they see any benefits."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority cleared a hurdle in Washington D.C. this week and hopes to resume the long-delayed project by the end of this year or early next year. The M.T.A. gave up the idea of building a scaled down version of the line just on the Upper East Side some time ago, but after that decision was changed, officials continued to say those stops would be built first and were relatively quiet about the Downtown component of the first phase.

The M.T.A. hopes to finish the first phase in 2012 and it will allow Upper East Side commuters (at 96th, 86th or 72nd Sts.) to get on an expanded Q-line which will follow the current Q route down to Canal St. and on to Brooklyn. The trip to Lower Manhattan is likely to be faster on the Q’s Broadway line than the full Second Ave. line – the T – because commuters will be able to get to Canal St. in six stops from E. 72nd St. on the Q route and seven or eight stops on the T train depending on whether riders get off at Grand and Chrystie Sts. or Chatham Square – the stations closest to Canal.

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, one of the strongest backers of the line, said about 200,000 riders are expected to use the Q-Second Ave. line the first day it opens, perhaps in six years. One of them may be Amelie Thurston, 27, a straphanger who was waiting for a Brooklyn-bound Q on Canal Tuesday. (She’ll be counted twice that day in 2012 if she takes a roundtrip.)

Thurston said she has heard a little about the Second Ave. line but has not followed developments closely since it seemed a long way off. She did not know it would connect with the Q, but said she thought she would ride this new line most days.

“I have heard about it, but I haven’t researched it or anything,” she said. “It’ll be done when it’s done.”

The Second Ave. el was torn down in 1942 and East Siders are now halfway through their seventh decade of waiting for a new train line. Bill Wheeler, the M.T.A.’s director of planning, said he understands the skepticism, but this time the agency will have the $3.8 billion to build the first phase, and by linking to Downtown in the beginning, it means a viable line can open before the 15-year project is done.

“You get benefits right away,” Wheeler said in a telephone interview. He said Washington was reluctant to pay for a plan that would take so long to pay off. The Partnership for New York City, a group of business leaders, released a report 21/2 years ago saying the Second Ave. project should be a lower priority in part because the M.T.A. was not planning to open it in phases at that time.

The project’s intent is to relieve the severe overcrowding on the Lexington line on the Upper East Side and provide service to people living and working in neighborhoods near the East River including parts of Chinatown, the Lower East Side and the Financial District.

Wheeler, Maloney and other Second Ave. advocates were happy this week because the federal government moved the project into the final design stage. The M.T.A. is expected to invest $2.5 billion, and Washington $1.3 billion to cover the first phase of the project.

“Final design means you can get the design ready for real bids,” Wheeler said of the federal decision. “It means they’re as serious as we are about the job.”

Maloney said the subway project battle has spanned her entire 14-year career in Congress and has been her toughest. “Given the starts and stops, starts and stops they want to make sure we’re going to do it,” she said. Maloney thinks they never would have gotten this far if not for the work of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who once held up the state budget until the M.T.A. committed to the full build line.

“Shelly and I are not going to stop,” Maloney said, in explaining why she thinks the line will be built soon. She said the pair has joined with Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer to form a task force to make sure the M.T.A. does not shift the project’s money to other places.

In the 1970s, the M.T.A. started building Second Ave. tunnels, but construction stopped because of the city’s fiscal crisis. Wheeler said there was no plan to open the project in phases then, so canceling was not a difficult decision because it was such a long-term, expensive project.

Wheeler said the Q express tunnel has enough tunnel capacity to accommodate the extra trains that may start coming from the Upper East Side starting in 2012. He said the tunnel connecting Canal St. to the four R,W local stops in the Financial District is pretty busy and probably couldn’t accommodate too many Q trains, but if ridership demand increases at those stops in the next few years, the M.T.A. could consider extending the Q to Downtown stops south of Canal St. in the first phase.

The second phase is likely to connect the line between 125th and 96th Sts. and will have a Metro-North transfer, Wheeler said. The third phase will run from 72nd St. to Houston St. and the last one from Houston St. to Hanover Square, with stops in between at Grand St., Chatham Square and the Seaport. If a planned rail link connecting Lower Manhattan with J.F.K. Airport and the Long Island Rail Road is built, it will also allow for the Second Ave. T to be extended into Brooklyn through the link’s new tunnel.

Speaker Silver, whose district includes Chinatown and the Lower East Side, has always been concerned that the M.T.A. would never build the Downtown portion if the money ran out. In an interview with Downtown Express two years ago, he said he was even willing to block the entire project unless the M.T.A. agreed to do construction work Downtown in the first phase.

A Silver spokesperson said Wednesday that the speaker is willing to accept Washington’s insistence on phasing the project, so long as the entire line gets built.

“The Q-line is an interim step to qualify for federal funding,” said the spokesperson, Jim Quent. “The speaker remains committed to the full build of the Second Ave. subway.”

Maloney, whose eastern district includes some of the Lower East Side, said many New Yorkers will reap the benefits of the new line including Maloney herself, particularly when she meets Downtown constituents on winery nights in meetings far away from subway stops.

“Before you and I die,” she said, “let’s get this complete.”

Josh@DowntownExpress.com

Scruffy88

May 11th, 2006, 08:37 PM

I wish that it would continue past 125st and lex and continue west on 125 to the hudson and that way reconnect all those subway lines. because every single train line that crosses 125 stops there. only 42nd street does that. They are missing out on a major oppertunity to do something that will make commutes quicker for tens of thousands to many more. That way people can transfer trains uptown and remove some congestion from the midtown transfer stations. GC, TS, Bryant Park, 59th lex, 53rd lex, herald sq, penn. and so forth. It wouldn't be more than 2 miles more track. what do you think?

3tmk

May 11th, 2006, 09:19 PM

^You are completely right, you cannot cross manhattan east-west with the subways except in midtown.
What I believe we need is a giant line going from the Bronx to Queens and Brooklyn, however since most people commute to Manhattan, there might be no need for such a line. Except connecting Laguardia to JFK

mariusz_ny

May 13th, 2006, 07:19 PM

I'll be back again in one year. :lol: :jk:

iahcgnoht

May 14th, 2006, 03:43 AM

good new

TalB

May 14th, 2006, 04:01 AM

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_156/silver2ndavesubway.html
Silver: 2nd Ave. subway takes a back seat to rail link

By Josh Rogers

Some might call Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver “Mr. Second Avenue” for his determined efforts to get a subway line built there, but he said last week that there is a transit project even more important — a Downtown rail connection to the Long Island Rail Road.

The rail link has the strong support of the Downtown business community, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the politician Silver differs with most often, Gov. George Pataki. But many transit advocates argue the link will not attract enough riders to justify the preliminary $6 billion estimate.

In an exclusive interview with Downtown Express editors and reporters last Friday, Silver, 62, said the rail link should be a higher priority than the Second Ave. subway, which he still favors. The link would also provide a 20-minute, one-seat ride from Lower Manhattan to J.F.K. Airport, but the speaker said the most important thing is to improve the commute from Long Island to help Downtown businesses.

“I don’t care if it stops at the airport or not,” Silver, whose district includes the World Trade Center site, said. “What we need is one-seat, Long Island access to Downtown…. I have had the experience of talking to enough businesses down here to know that that’s a real, real factor.”

According to a preliminary estimate, a new rail tunnel in the East River would shorten the Long Island commute by about 15 minutes each way, although it would not be a one-seat ride since passengers would have to change trains in Jamaica, Queens.
Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, a non-profit advocacy group, said he was surprised to learn that the speaker ranked the link ahead of the Second Ave. subway. The subway line would draw an estimated 200,000 riders a day once the first part is built, perhaps as soon as 2012.

“The rail link is a stinker,” Russianoff said in a telephone interview. “We think it will move very few people.” He is skeptical of the argument made by business leaders that the Long Island link would spark economic benefits near its stops at the W.T.C., Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn and Jamaica, and that it will make the W.T.C. a desirable location for international firms. “It’s almost a religious belief on their part that’s not supported by the data.”

Russianoff said one of the problems with the link to Downtown is that it will only stop near the W.T.C., making it less attractive to Long Island commuters who work closer to Wall St. and won’t want to change trains twice or walk 10 minutes or so to get to the office. The link’s environmental impact statement is being prepared by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority and is expected to be finished sometime next year.

Silver agrees with Russianoff that the Second Ave. project, which is estimated to cost almost three times more than the link, is important to relieve overcrowding and provide new service along Manhattan’s East Side. Silver said if phasing the project is the only way to get the federal money needed, he is willing to accept for now the current schedule to build the Lower Manhattan portion last, pointing out that a new governor will be controlling the transit authority next year.

“The project will survive this M.T.A. board and like everything else, things change as administrations change. It’s the only project being talked about longer than Jerry Nadler’s freight tunnel,” Silver said in reference to U.S. Rep. Nadler’s plan for a rail freight tunnel. “It’s time to get it going.”

Silver expressed no doubt that Eliot Spitzer, the state’s attorney general, will be the next governor. He said he has spoken often with Spitzer about Lower Manhattan redevelopment plans, but he doesn’t expect the attorney general to comment now, since it is long before he assumes Spitzer will assume office. Silver did repeat many of his criticisms of Gov. Pataki, whom Silver thinks is the person most responsible for the delay in getting construction started at the W.T.C. site.

“Everything has been an embarrassment,” Silver said. “He laid a cornerstone almost two years ago [for the Freedom Tower]. Not one other stone has been put on top of that cornerstone and you have to move that cornerstone [to begin building].”

A year ago, Silver called for speeding up the construction schedule on Church St. to get stores and life back to the site, but the Port, controlled by Pataki and the New Jersey governor, is only now starting to build the bathtub required to prepare for office construction. The sites will not be ready for tower construction for another year.

“The calamity of this whole thing is no matter what you would build down there, that bathtub work had to be done,” he said. “We’re almost five years into it and nobody has done it. There’s 18 months of work that has to get done.”

Silver attended last Thursday’s ceremony at the site marking the beginning of Freedom Tower construction. In the interview the next day he said it represented progress, but the delays mean that it will take a decade to rebuild the site, assuming there are no more delays. On Wednesday, Silver praised W.T.C. developer Larry Silverstein for selecting architects Richard Rogers of the United Kingdom and Fumihiko Maki of Japan to design Towers 3 and 4 respectively. The buildings will be on Church and on Greenwich Sts. and their addresses will be 175 and 150 Greenwich St.

Joanna Rose, Pataki’s spokesperson, said that “the governor’s consistent leadership has driven the momentum Downtown,” pointing to the beginning of construction of the memorial, two transportation hubs, the Freedom Tower and the deal to keep Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan, catty-corner to the W.T.C. She said “it’s easy to be a critic when you are not actually doing it.”

Silver said the Goldman deal was a good one, but it ended up costing the public several hundred million dollars extra after the firm temporarily pulled out. Silver said the leader of Goldman Sachs’s real estate department told him last year that the bank dropped out because it seemed like no one was coordinating the W.T.C. site’s security plans. He said the executive told him in a private conversation that “we found out there was no plan, that this Freedom Tower was never going to get built, and he said I don’t think it was malicious but no one talked to anyone.”

Ultimately, the design and security plans for the Freedom Tower were changed and Goldman agreed to build its Battery Park City headquarters after the state and city offered an additional $650 million in tax-free Liberty Bonds.

Another threat to delaying redevelopment are lawsuits filed by 9/11 family groups to stop W.T.C. memorial construction on preservation and religious grounds. Some rabbis argue that the plan to list the names underground is a violation of Jewish law. Silver, an Orthodox Jew, said he was unaware of that restriction although he was careful to say it could just be something he had never heard about. Later in the interview, when he was asked about a plan to set up an eruv — an area making it easier for Ortohdox Jews to observe the Sabbath — near his home on the Lower East Side, he made it clear he is not an authority when it comes to Judaism.

“I have a deal with rabbis for 30 years,” he said. “I don’t pass questions on religious law, and they don’t run in primaries.”

Josh@DowntownExpress.com

Scruffy88

May 24th, 2006, 07:08 AM

^ First off Sheldon Silvers is a dumbass, has always been a dumbass, and will continue on being a dumbass

^You are completely right, you cannot cross manhattan east-west with the subways except in midtown.
What I believe we need is a giant line going from the Bronx to Queens and Brooklyn, however since most people commute to Manhattan, there might be no need for such a line. Except connecting Laguardia to JFK

THANK YOU!! I posted this a while ago and was scoffed at. I proposed a subway line roughly along what the q44 bus route was. It would be a 4 track subway, express and local. Start off at Jamaica Station connecting to the LIRR continue north under main street connecting the jz, and the f all the way to flushing connecting to the last stop of the 7, then branching under willets point blvd to bayside which is probably the biggest major neighborhood in NYC that doesn't have any subway access cross under the East River by the Throgs Neck hit the neighborhood Throgs Neck which again has no subway, it would go through castle hill, connect to the 6 at Parkchester which already is a major local and express stop on the 6. Continue north and veer west under pelham Pkway and Fordham road. It would connect to the 2 and 5 go further westm connect the B and D at Grand Concourse and Fordham and connect the 4 and continue west to Manhattan and end at 200th street just south of Inwood park connecting with the 1 and A trains. By tying up all these outlying train lines it could drastically improve commutes and more importantly if you needed to shut down a line for repairs, it would give commuters several other options to get to work and such. On top of the fact that it would stop at Fordham station and connect Metro North trains and LIRR trains without ever going through Manhattan. It would also be a better and using the express faster way for everyone in the northern suburbs to connect to JFK without going through manhattan by taking the express to jamaica and transferring to the airtrain. Fuck the airtrain to downtown. this makes more sense

before the flames, i know its a pipe dream and will never happen. And no, the 44 bus is not adequate enough to handle this seeing how that ends at Bronx Zoo and takes about 2 hours to go its entire route

Scruffy88

June 4th, 2006, 02:12 AM

So on the map they preovided about the line and its stops, it has a stop at 42nd street that if Im reading it right will be connected to and counted as part of the Grand Central Terminal hub. Can that be real? Are they really planning on building a passageway from Lexington to 3rd Ave to 2nd Ave? Thats a really long passage

3tmk

June 20th, 2006, 11:37 PM

^If you look at the map provided on the mta site:
http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/capconstr/sas/pdf/overview8_18_03.pdf
It mentions that transfers are under evaluation, for Grand Central, but also for the 55th street too.
I think it's possible.

TalB

July 9th, 2006, 09:15 PM

As of now the M15 bus runs along the route the SAS would go, though it will only go southbound while 1st Ave is for that same bus going northbound.

The Urban Politician

July 18th, 2006, 05:58 AM

A few questions about the 2nd avenue subway project:

1) Will it run express/local or just local?

2) I don't understand why there is no stop between 96th and 86th, since the 6 train lacks one as well. How about something on 92nd?

3) Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a connection to the F train at 63rd? More connectivity means more convenience, after all

4) Why is this subway running on 2nd avenue in the first place. Wouldn't it make more sense to run it under 1st avenue, thus spreading the routes out more and improving overall access?

AndySocks

July 18th, 2006, 11:57 AM

Here's some answers, I hope:

1) probably just local. Someone correct me if they know that four tracks are being built. My gut doubts it, though.

2) Stops on main streets. The main streets, S to N, are 14, 23, 34, 42, 57, 72, 79, 86, 96, 106, 116, 125. With the exception of 55th, this line pretty much coincides with that. It may not be the best spacing, but it's logical. Remember the importance of crosstown buses, which are more or less exclusive to these streets. A bigger question is, why skip 79th? It may be a bit close to 72nd, but it leaves one hell of a gap between 72nd and 86th.

3) already connects to the F at 63rd, but to the Q, not the T. The Q doesn't connect there today, so this will be new. Will be no problem going 72nd or higher, but going downtown on the SAS? Rather would take the E to Lexington and take that downtown.

4) 1st is a bit close to the water, so 2nd makes more sense. If we could start over, the UES would probably be best if we could have one under 5th, one under Park, and one under 2nd. Of course, that's not the case at all...

AndySocks

July 18th, 2006, 12:09 PM

With all that said, I think they should consider a new 7 train stop at 2nd Ave since the Flushing line gets so much damn traffic, and more connections with Brooklyn trains downtown, though I don't think I'm in any position to state which ones.

Castle_Bravo

October 7th, 2006, 03:10 PM

What is the situation with the 2nd avenue line today??
When will they start building it??

I also have heard a plan to build a line east to midtown, where many skyscrapers will be build.

lazar22b

October 7th, 2006, 06:38 PM

the line i think you're talking about is the train 7 line extension which will add a stop next to the Javis center and possibly another a little north east of there. There might be info on it in the hudson yards thread. As to the 2nd ave subway, i would like to know the status of it myself. Anyone?

TalB

October 24th, 2006, 08:48 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/464586p-390921c.html
Second Ave. subway plan picks up speed

BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Breaking ground on the Second Avenue subway - a dream for generations - is just months away, transit officials said yesterday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority hopes to award a contract to build a new tunnel for the East Side subway line by year's end, Mysore Nagaraja, president of the MTA's Capital Construction Co., said.

A giant underground boring machine will be used to drill through the rock below Second Avenue between 92nd and 63rd Sts., making progress at an estimated 40 to 50 feet a day, officials said.

Before the tunneling begins, possibly as early as next summer, the MTA will excavate a launch site for the boring machine. That work - and other preparations - could start in late December or early next year, Nagaraja said.

"After 60 years of planning, we are now building," Nagaraja said.

The first leg of the project will feature stations at 96th, 86th and 72nd Sts., and new entrances to the existing 63rd St. station on the Broadway line.

Trains would switch over to the Broadway line at 63rd St.

The $3.8 billion first phase of the Second Avenue subway is scheduled to be completed in 2013; it will carry about 200,000 riders a day.

The Federal Transit Administration is expected to give the MTA the green light soon to begin construction in anticipation of a full-funding agreement with the agency. That commits the feds to steady, long-term funding.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow has vowed not to step down until he's satisfied that the Second Avenue subway, and the planned LIRR extension to Grand Central, are well on their way toward fruition. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the leading gubernatorial candidate, has said he wants new leadership at the MTA.

Originally published on October 24, 2006

Castle_Bravo

October 24th, 2006, 10:25 PM

:banana::banana::banana::banana:
Good news. I hope they will realy begin...

GoBlues(CarltonFC)

December 30th, 2006, 11:34 AM

Minnesota Twin

January 11th, 2007, 12:53 PM

Has its started yet?

Curious Aussie!

No answer. Anyone know what's happening?

3tmk

January 12th, 2007, 06:27 AM

Nothing really is happening.
Of course, since all they do is dig, we can't really know because they're doing it underground until they decide to carve out the stations.

But what I do is that the MTA is surveying all over 2nd ave. but overall it's really messy work, taking very little steps, survey a place here, a place there, nothing large-scale, and I remember seeing a pamphlet against the MTA, asking if that's how they planned to build our subway.

I don't think we should expect them to start the large scale operations for a few years still, of course they already have some portions carved out during the 20s and 70s, so for now they just need to check on those tubes and plan how to proceed with the plans

BigMac

January 25th, 2007, 04:59 PM

NY1
January 24, 2007

Exclusive: Ground Breaking For 2nd Avenue Subway Line Weeks Away

One of the most anticipated projects in city history is about to get off the ground. As NY1 Transit reporter Bobby Cuza explained in this exclusive report, the MTA has selected contractors to dig the Second Avenue subway, and ground breaking is now just weeks away.

Plans for a Second Avenue subway line have been around so long, the tunnel segments were actually built in the 70s, before funding problems forced the project back on the shelf. Now, tunneling work is about to start again.

In a few weeks, say MTA officials, they will award a $333 million contract to build what they call Phase One.

"This is real now, and it is happening,” said Mysore Nagaraja of the MTA Capital Construction Corporation. “And we are excited about it."

The line that will eventually be known as the T will be simply an extension of the Q train, at first, running from 63rd Street to 96th Street.

A consortium of three American companies submitted the winning bid for construction work: Skanska USA Civil, Schiavone Construction, and J.F. Shea Construction. They will be formally awarded the contract after a two-to-four-week vetting process.

Then construction work will begin between 96th and 92nd Streets, where a tunnel boring machine will begin drilling the new tunnels.

"We are going to be taking two to three lanes for construction,” said Nagaraja. “And we have to relocate all the utilities there first. And once the utilities are relocated, then we have to make this hole, which is about 60 or 70 feet deep. That is when the machine can be dropped in there and [we can] start assembling the machine."

Residents of the Upper East Side can expect to see construction activity not much more than a month from now.
"They've got to put up trailers, and they've got to start work,” added Nagaraja. “And I'm assuming sometime early March we'll see some construction."

Eventually, the Second Avenue subway will run all the way from 125th Street in East Harlem down to Hanover Square in the Financial District. But that's many, many years away. Phase One of the project alone is expected to take until the year 2013 to complete.

-Bobby Cuza

Copyright © 2006 NY1 News

M II A II R II K

January 26th, 2007, 12:51 AM

That's great news, but with just a T train I guess there won't be any express trains on this line.

3tmk

January 26th, 2007, 06:56 AM

woohoo, I hope I can see one of those giant drilling machines

firmanhadi

January 31st, 2007, 08:33 PM

Rising Costs Put N.Y. Transit Projects at Risk

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority faces surging costs that could force it to eliminate or postpone badly needed projects less than halfway through a five-year, $21 billion program to expand and improve its transit system. By one estimate, the program is now $1.4 billion over budget...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/nyregion/31transit.html?hp&ex=1170306000&en=e30ec91a04a81ab4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

TalB

March 6th, 2007, 01:40 AM

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03052007/news/regionalnews/dig_it__2nd_ave__line_is_on_track_regionalnews_jeremy_olshan__transit_reporter.htm
DIG IT! 2ND AVE. LINE IS ON TRACK

By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03052007/photos/news022.jpg

March 5, 2007 -- The second groundbreaking of the Second Avenue subway is only weeks away, MTA officials say.

"It's been in the planning for the last 60 years, but it's going to happen in the next few weeks," said Mysore Nagaraja, head of MTA Capital Construction.

The first groundbreaking on the project, in the works since 1929, occurred at the corner of East 103rd Street nearly 35 years ago.

The MTA completed several sections of the tunnels, but by 1975, the city's fiscal crisis derailed the project.

All the while, the need for the project has never been in question - the East Side's Lexington Avenue line has long been crammed beyond capacity.

The new subway, which extends the Q line and creates a T line, will be completed in four phases.

Phase One will run from 96th Street down to 63rd Street, where it will connect to the Q line.

This segment, which includes stops at 86th and 72nd streets, will cost $3.8 billion and is scheduled to be completed in 2013. It will be used by an estimated 191,000 riders daily.

The MTA is about to accept the low bid for the tunneling of the first phase, and expects to sign a full funding grant agreement with the federal government shortly.

Phase Two will run from 125th Street through the vacant 1970s tunnels before connecting to 96th Street. Phase Three will run down to Houston Street, and the last leg will go all the way to Hanover Square in lower Manhattan.

Before the tunneling can start, the gas, water, sewer, electric and communications lines that run under the street will have to be either supported or moved out of the way, Nagaraja said. This should take roughly eight months.

The tunneling should take just over a year, Nagaraja said. All the while, the MTA will be monitoring the vibrations so as not to disturb those above ground.

The MTA has already spent $266 million on the design and planning of the new subway.

Longtime residents and officials on the Upper East Side say the MTA has answered many of the concerns about the construction project.

"This is a case of be careful what you wish for. We've wanted this subway for so long, but now we have to deal with some of the consequences of getting it," said David Liston, chairman of Community Board 8.

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

AndySocks

March 6th, 2007, 02:57 AM

I always loathed that Lexington Ave. stop, it doesn't connect to anything, it's useless, haha. Glad to see it may serve a purpose in my distant future.

TalB

March 13th, 2007, 03:36 AM

http://www.amny.com/news/local/transportation/subway/am-subway0312,0,3930277.story?coll=am-homepromo-briefs
MTA to sign 2nd Ave line contract

By Chuck Bennett, amNewYork Staff Writer

cbennett@am-ny.com

March 12, 2007

It's almost "T" time.

On March 29, the MTA is finally expected to sign a contract for construction of the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway, amNewYork has learned. The new line will be known as the T line.

Elliot "Lee" Sander, the MTA's new executive director, and Chairman Peter Kalikow will approve the $333 million contract for the first phase of the project that critics thought would never happen.

"All of the sudden it turned from doubtful to inevitable and nobody quite knows when it happened," Kalikow said at the last MTA board meeting.

Almost immediately after the contract is signed, construction trailers will start to line parts of Second Avenue in the East 90s, MTA officials said.

The groundbreaking ceremony, along with actual digging, is scheduled for late April or early May. The exact location has not been determined.

"I think it will be a significant event because of the history of the project," Sander said of the groundbreaking.

"It will be a real groundbreaking, we have the funding, we have the contract. We are looking forward to getting it going, it will be an historic moment for New York."

First proposed more than 80 years ago, the Second Avenue Subway was dubbed "the most famous project never built." It will be the city's first new subway line in 60 years.

This first phase will be a joint-venture among Skanska USA Civil, Schiavone Construction and J.F. Shea Construction, whose bid of $333 million was almost $20 million less than the MTA predicted.

Work on this part of the T line, which is expected to finish in 2013, will connect East 96th Street to East 63rd Street. Three new subway stations will be built during that time. By 2020, the line should run from 125th Street to Hanover Square in the Financial District.

A top Republican fundraiser for years, Kalikow and his behind-the-scenes negotiations were crucial in winning federal and state funding for the project.

An estimated 202,000 people are expected to use the T line on its first day of operation, the MTA predicted.

"We're very excited," said Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), one of the project's leading advocates. "It will ensure we have a modern transportation infrastructure."

The project already went through two groundbreaking ceremonies. The first was in 1925 but work stopped in the face of the Great Depression and World War II. In 1972, Mayor John Lindsay held his own groundbreaking at 102nd Street. More of the tunnel was dug, but then work had to be abandoned during the city's fiscal crisis.

The third groundbreaking ceremony will be the charm, MTA officials said. Details are still being finalized, but one possibility is bringing dignitaries and a ceremonial pickax to one of the unfinished tunnels from the 1970s.

These days subway service on the East Side, where riders feel like sardines, is at capacity.

"The Lexington Avenue line is very overburdened," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), who represents the East Side. "It has 1.3 million riders a day, that's more than San Francisco, Boston and Chicago's [transit lines] combined."

Yorkville residents, however, better brace themselves for major construction disruptions.

Two lanes of traffic on Second Avenue between 96th Street and 92rd Street will be closed to vehicles while workers relocate utility pipes and cables, according to Mysore Nagaraja, president of MTA Capital Construction.

Then six to eight months later at 93rd Street, workers will dig a massive hole to lower a tunnel boring machine 70 feet down. All the while, trucks will be delivering supplies such as steel, timber and cement while hauling away tons and tons of dirt and rock.

Aboveground work is authorized between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. while tunneling will continue 24-7 below ground.

"We're making sure the impact is minimized, unfortunately I can't hide the construction," Nagaraja said.

Timetable of the T

2007-13: Phase 1: Three new stations, 96th, 86th and 72nd streets, with connection to Q station at 63rd Street
2014-18: Phase 2: 125th Street to 96th Street
2015-18: Phase 3: 63rd Street to Houston Street
2017-20: Phase 4: Houston Street to Hanover Square

3tmk

March 13th, 2007, 05:21 AM

Then six to eight months later at 93rd Street, workers will dig a massive hole to lower a tunnel boring machine 70 feet down. All the while, trucks will be delivering supplies such as steel, timber and cement while hauling away tons and tons of dirt and rock.

This is what I want to see

hkskyline

March 31st, 2007, 04:57 PM

Shouldn't be too bad with a boring machine instead of cut and cover.

Taylorhoge

April 2nd, 2007, 12:28 AM

Ill try to get pics in a few weeks maybe of the machine even though it comes in sections

Metsfan1520

April 6th, 2007, 04:42 AM

i just heard tonight on the news that the MTA is comtemplating putting platform doors in the new stations. this would prevent accidents and make it easier and cheaper to cool the stations. new york will finally have a civilized subway. i hope the mta goes through with it.

Don Omar

April 9th, 2007, 07:57 AM

Is That Finally the Sound of a 2nd Ave. Subway?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/08/nyregion/09subway.xlarge1.jpg
Mayor John V. Lindsay swung his pickax at a subway groundbreaking in 1972. Looking on, from left, were Percy E. Sutton, the Manhattan borough president; Senator Jacob K. Javits; John A. Volpe, United States secretary of transportation; and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: April 9, 2007
nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/nyregion/09subway.html)

The neckties are wide and the sideburns long, the pickaxes gleam in the sunlight. The governor thanks the president for providing money. The mayor jokes that “whatever is said about this project in the years to come, certainly no one can say that the city acted rashly or without due deliberation.”

The governor swings his pickax, but the pavement is too hard. A jackhammer is brought in to loosen things up. Now the governor and the mayor lay to with gusto.

The Second Avenue subway is born.

Or so it seemed at the time.

The sideburns were long and the neckties wide because it was 1972. The president was Nixon. The governor was Rockefeller. The mayor was Lindsay. And nearly 35 years later, no trains have ever run under Second Avenue.

But the line has had at least three groundbreakings.

On Thursday it will get another one.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and a host of dignitaries will descend through a sidewalk hatch at Second Avenue and 102nd Street, a block south of the spot where Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mayor John V. Lindsay held a groundbreaking in October 1972. They will go into a never-used section of a three-decade old subway tunnel, stretching from 105th Street to 99th Street. The governor will give a speech, hoist a pickax and take a few cracks at the concrete wall, symbolically beginning the construction where it left off in the 1970s.

“There used to be a saying in New York, ‘I should live so long,’ ” said William J. Ronan, the first chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who presided over the groundbreaking in 1972.

“Well I sure hope they’ll do it this time because time is moving on,” Dr. Ronan, 94, who lives in Florida, said. “And of course it’s going to cost a fortune, more than back when we were going to do it. It was expensive enough then.”

Several factors actually suggest that this time the outcome may be different. The financing for the $3.8 billion project appears more certain than in the past, including an anticipated federal commitment to cover about a third of the cost.

And the plan is more measured. The goal is to build a first section of the subway with stops along Second Avenue at 96th, 86th and 72nd Streets and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue. It is intended to operate as an extension of the Q line and is expected to open in 2013. Once further financing is secured, later phases of construction will extend the line north to 125th Street and south to Lower Manhattan.

It was September 1929 when the city formally announced plans to build the Second Avenue subway, running the length of the East Side and into the Bronx. The cost of digging the Manhattan portion of the tunnel was estimated at $99 million, although there would be additional expenses, including the cost of real estate and equipment.

The Second Avenue plans were part of an ambitious expansion to add a 100-mile network with an overall estimated cost of about $800 million. But within a few years, during the Great Depression, planning for the new line came to a halt.

The plans were revived during World War II. In 1951, voters approved a measure that allowed the city to raise $500 million for transit improvements, with the expectation that most of it would go to build the new line. But the money was used to fix up the existing system. No work was performed on Second Avenue.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority took over the city’s subway system in 1968. Dr. Ronan began championing an ambitious range of projects, including the Second Avenue subway, from Whitehall Street to 138th Street in the Bronx. In 1968 the subway line bore a remarkably modest price tag of $335 million, but by the time of the groundbreaking in 1972, it had risen to $1 billion.

That ceremony was preserved in an 8 millimeter film shot by Robert A. Olmsted, who was a top planner at the transportation authority.

In the film, the sun is shining brightly, although some of the men are wearing coats and fedoras. There is a holiday air, and the mayor and the governor are all smiles. The two have been feuding for years, but on this day, they manage to keep their pickaxes aimed at the street.

“We were optimistic,” recalled Mr. Olmsted, who is 82. “It looked like we were going to get something done.”

Dr. Ronan recalled feeling that, “at long last, we’re going to have the Second Avenue subway.”

“It was a great day when they got to the groundbreaking,” he said. “Everybody was congratulating everybody. It got good play. It should have.”

Sidney J. Frigand, who was a spokesman at the authority in 1972, said he was more skeptical, especially about how the project would be financed. “There were a lot of flaws that had to be ironed out, and I sensed that it wouldn’t proceed as rapidly as we hoped,” he said.

Last week, a reporter described the film to Mr. Frigand, including the portion where the governor’s pickax failed to make the desired impact and the jackhammer had to be called in. “That’s the perils of groundbreaking,” Mr. Frigand, 81, said.

In October 1973, a year after that ceremony, another groundbreaking was held for the start of work on the downtown section, at Canal Street. Mayor Lindsay had gone bareheaded the previous year but now, according to a report in The New York Times, he wore a hard hat and talked ominously about “brinksmanship,” suggesting the city could not afford to keep building the subway without a large infusion of federal money. The cost had reached $1.3 billion.

This time, the pavement had been broken up in advance. After the speeches, The Times reported, the mayor attacked the loosened paving blocks with his pick.

In July 1974, Mayor Abraham D. Beame attended a groundbreaking at Second Avenue and Second Street. He went at the pavement with a jackhammer. The plan was to build the subway piecemeal, contracting out short, disconnected sections.

A year later the city was near bankruptcy; Mayor Beame called a halt to further construction. The stretch of tunnel he broke ground on was never built, although three other sections were finished and sealed. They included the two that Mayor Lindsay inaugurated, from 99th Street to 105th Street and Canal Street to Chatham Square, and a section from 110th Street to 120th Street.

Edward I. Koch was a congressman in 1972, and he appears in the film of the groundbreaking, although he said last week that he did not remember the event.

“I have no recollection of that day,” said Mr. Koch, who became mayor in 1978. “I do have a recollection that the Second Avenue subway — the first shovel went into the ground when God created the earth.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/08/nyregion/09subway.large2.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/09/nyregion/0409_SUBWAY_MAP.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/08/nyregion/09subway_promo.190.jpg
Video
(http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp?fr_story=1f936c11155887c4b2bc16ac3ad10467c267caaf)

TalB

April 10th, 2007, 03:04 AM

Is the extension of the Q only going to be temporary until they get the T, or is it part of the plan?

TalB

April 13th, 2007, 02:56 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/nyregion/12cnd-tunnel.html?ref=nyregion
Ground Broken Yet Again for 2nd Avenue Subway

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: April 12, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/12/nyregion/13tunnel600.1.jpg
Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
A host of dignitaries went underground on Thursday for a groundbreaking ceremony for the Second Avenue subway in a never-used tunnel built for the on-again-off-again project in the 1970s.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and a host of other dignitaries went underground today for a groundbreaking ceremony for the Second Avenue subway in a never-used tunnel built for the on-again-off-again project in the 1970s.

The ceremony was haunted by past failures, as every official who spoke alluded to the long-awaited subway line’s history of starts and stops — mostly stops.

It was at least the fourth groundbreaking to take place for the Second Avenue subway — the previous ones dating to the work done in the 1970s.

“Why is this groundbreaking different from all the other groundbreakings?” joked Peter Kalikow, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, evoking the ritual questions of Passover.

“This time it is different because we do have the money.”

Or at least they hope they do. The first leg of the subway line has a budget of $3.8 billion. Officials are waiting for the federal government to formally commit to financing a third of that amount. The authority expects to borrow the majority of the money needed for construction through the sale of bonds.

The first section of the new subway will have stations along Second Avenue at 96th Street, 86th Street and 72nd Street and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue. It will operate as an extension of the Q line and is scheduled to open in 2013.

After the speeches were done, the governor, Mr. Kalikow and several other officials took shiny steel brick hammers with safety orange handles and prepared to bang on a section of wall that had been rigged to fall away. Before they could begin, a crush of photographers jumped on the stage, blocking the view of the television cameras that were set up farther away on a riser. That frustrated public relations officials at the authority who had dreams of providing the governor and their project an iconic moment on the evening news.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg skipped the ceremony entirely. He was in Cincinnati meeting with other mayors about his crusade against illegal guns. He sent Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff in his place.

That made it the first Second Avenue subway groundbreaking without a mayor in attendance. Of the three previous groundbreakings, two were attended by Mayor John V. Lindsay and the third was attended by Mayor Abraham D. Beame.

Mysore Nagaraja, the president of capital construction for the transportation authority, said work will start on April 23. He said the first phase of work will involve blocking off two lanes of traffic on Second Avenue from 92nd to 95th Streets, where they will begin digging test pits to uncover the maze of utility lines that must be moved. He said that about a year from now, a giant tunnel boring machine will begin to grind away under Second Avenue.

The tunnel that was the site of today’s groundbreaking reaches from 99th Street to 103rd Street. When the line’s first phase is done it will be used as an area to store subway trains. Ultimately, the full subway line is expected to run from 125th Street all the way to lower Manhattan.

Several officials vowed today to make sure the full line is built, although there is as yet no money set aside for that part of the project.

3tmk

April 13th, 2007, 05:55 AM

lol so that's where they were! It was raining pretty heavy this morning, it's a good thing they were prepared
I hope they can expand the project so that it goes all the way to the westside and connects to the broadway lines.

hkskyline

April 23rd, 2007, 05:38 AM

Second Ave. Subway Lurches Forward
New Yorkers Have Waited Nearly 90 Years for the Oft-Promised East Side Line
22 April 2007
The Washington Post

New York is a city of transit myths: Alligators live in the subway tunnels. A man died on the train, but no one noticed. Yeah, I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

Someday there will be a Second Avenue subway line.

That subway line, first proposed in 1920, has been repeatedly planned and abandoned. It has become New York's longest-running municipal joke, its partially built, unused tunnels a hollow promise of economic growth snaking under the East Side of Manhattan.

But a groundbreaking ceremony this month -- the line's fourth -- has relaunched construction on what would be the first New York subway line to be built in more than 70 years. After the four phases of construction are completed, the Second Avenue train is to shuttle from Lower Manhattan to Spanish Harlem and link some of Manhattan's wealthiest neighborhoods and some of its poorest.

The Second Avenue subway has become a metaphor for the city's grand ambitions and its inability to get things done. Its status has marked the city's ragged cycles of boom and bust, each optimistic period causing officials to haul out the subway plans and each recession prompting them to be shelved.

"As goes the Second Avenue subway, so goes New York," said Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city's deputy mayor for economic development. He spoke at the groundbreaking, which took place in a portion of the unused Second Avenue tunnel that had been sealed off -- a pristine, pale cement hollow beneath 99th Street.

Now, as New York is being reborn as a boomtown -- and its subway is no longer perceived as a lawless place of muggings, graffiti, broken doors and smashed lights -- the Second Avenue line is having another revival.

"This time it's for real," said Elliot G. Sander, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways.

Transportation analysts say planners want to keep pace with the growing city. Subway ridership last year was 1.4 billion, its highest since 1952.

It will take $3.8 billion, mostly secured in federal and state funds, for the first phase of construction, extending the existing Q train route along Second Avenue from 63rd Street to 96th. This is due to be completed by 2013.

The first Second Avenue line, an elevated train, cast a dark shadow onto the street below and spewed out cinder, soot and noise. As subways replaced the "Els" on several north-south routes, Second Avenue was supposed to follow suit.

In 1929, plans for a Second Avenue subway were revived -- months before the stock market crash -- then were shelved because of the Great Depression.

The Second Avenue El was dismantled in wartime 1942, and plans for a subway line were resurrected. The destruction of the Els was cast with historical import, as a false rumor spread that the Japanese bought the scrap and used it for bombs to rain down on Pearl Harbor. In 1951, a measure passed permitting the city to raise $500 million, mainly to build the Second Avenue line. But the money disappeared into repairs for the existing subway.

Then the MTA took over the city's subways in 1968 and pushed for a Second Avenue expansion of the system.

When a groundbreaking finally took place on a sunny October day in 1972, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller joked that "no one can say that the city acted rashly." Further ceremonies followed in 1973 and 1974 for different construction locations. But the city's fiscal crisis in 1974 again braked expansion, leaving useless, disconnected stretches of tunnel.

Those sealed-off tunnels have to be maintained, at a cost of at least $20,000 a year, because they support the streets above, said Peter G. Cafiero, acting chief of operations planning for the MTA.

The tunnels, like any good myth, have found their way into art. In a comic play by Chad Beckim, the subway line catches three residents off-guard in gentrifying East Harlem and symbolically runs over them. One novel warns that near the Second Avenue tunnels are vampires; another book says Viking ships.

New Yorkers have suggested installing a mushroom farm or a wine cellar in the tunnels. (Former mayor Edward I. Koch said he'd rather bet on the mushroom harvest than on the completion of the subway.) In the early 1980s, the MTA announced it would rent the tunnels to any imaginative entrepreneur, and one company sought to use the space as "the world's longest filing cabinet."

But none of this solved the East Side's needs for transportation.

Urban planners and historians say the lack of a Second Avenue line has actually affected the face of the city.

The East Village and the Lower East Side -- districts settled by immigrant Jews and later Poles, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans -- remained poor tenement neighborhoods partly for lack of a subway, said Kenneth T. Jackson, a professor of urban history at Columbia University. Ditto for Second Avenue north of the United Nations at 42nd Street, he said.

"The spine of elite settlement runs up the center of the island," said Jackson. "In New York, you need to be attached to the subway system to justify high density and high rents."

While Manhattan's West Side has three subway lines, the East Side has only one, the overcrowded Lexington Avenue line, which crams in 1.5 million riders on a weekday, 30 percent of the system's ridership -- more riders than the entire rail systems of cities such as Washington, Los Angeles and Miami.

To ease the crush, officials have looked back in time and considered rebuilding a trolley line or encouraging an East River commuter ferry service, which a century ago transported millions a year. But then plans focused anew on the subway, which will eventually extend north to Harlem and south to the lower tip of Manhattan at Hanover Square.

"The history is rumors," said Maria Sorobay, 77, who has lived on Second Avenue for 35 years but is not sure she'll ever ride its subway line. "It's a good thing I like to walk."

3tmk

April 23rd, 2007, 05:27 PM

I went to the upper east side this weekend and they still haven't done anything!
Just put some signs telling people to move their cars on the 24th. So at this rate they'll start digging next year

herenthere

April 26th, 2007, 12:13 AM

Channel 7 news on SAS groundbreaking. But I still can't get over on why they need 6 years to build a subway that will only be 1/3 complete. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41IywEP-JJk

TalB

April 27th, 2007, 01:21 AM

I just noticed on the MTA's website, that they are excavating for the line.

http://www.mta.info/capconstr/sas/images/sas_const.jpg

TalB

May 16th, 2007, 03:14 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/nyregion/thecity/13seco.html?_r=1&ref=thecity&oref=login
Caught in the Headlights

By GREGORY BEYER
Published: May 13, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/13/nyregion/13sec_600.jpg
Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times
In the apartment house at Second Avenue and East 72nd Street, feelings of hope, doubt and denial.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/13/nyregion/13sec2_popout.jpg
Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times

Susan Wegemer: “Day to day, I try not to think about it.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/13/nyregion/13sec3_popout.jpg
Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times

Maria Moraitis: “I haven’t heard anything official.”

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/05/13/nyregion/13seco_CA5.ready.html
Sarah and Andrew Smith “Happy about the lump sum,” she says.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/13/nyregion/13sec5_600.jpg
Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times

Pam Berg “Our community is here; our customers are here.”

AS the Upper East Side braces for the commotion and transformation that will undoubtedly mark the first phase of construction of the Second Avenue subway, a very few of the neighborhood�s residents face a more dramatic change. To make room for subway stations and other components of the system, some buildings and the people who live in them will have to go.

Among the condemned is a brown, five-story building on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Second Avenue. The building, whose official address is 253-259 East 72nd Street, was built in 1881 and according to the landlord currently houses some 30 tenants.

A disharmony of attitudes resides there, too. Hope flourishes in one apartment while doubt lingers down the hall. Denial lives upstairs. Tenants are fluent in a language of uncertainty, and yet there are hints that they consider the matter settled, as if the wrecking ball had already had its way. When speaking of their building, their apartments and their lives within them, they tend to slip into the past tense.

To elucidate the intricacies of eminent domain and real estate issues, as well as the project�s status and timeline, representatives of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have attended meetings of the local community board.

Under federal law, the authority must pay reasonable moving expenses for residential tenants and offer at least one comparable replacement dwelling in the same neighborhood, if possible, or if not, nearby or in a similar neighborhood where housing costs are within the tenants� means. If comparable dwellings are not available, the agency will provide other assistance. In addition to the moving expenses and help with relocation, displaced renters are eligible for up to $5,250, and tenants must be given 90 days� notice before they are required to leave. (Regulations covering commercial tenants are slightly different.)

None of this will happen, however, until after a public hearing, currently scheduled for September, at which time tenants will be formally advised of their situation. Some outward-looking residents consider their own temporary inconvenience against the lasting benefits of a Second Avenue subway and muster praise for the much-heralded project. Others feel themselves forsaken � dispensable extras in a metropolitan adaptation of the old kicked-out-of-Paradise story. Perhaps, this latter faction hopes, the government will abort the project in a last-minute flush of humanism or at least have the decency to run out of money.

The Second Avenue subway has long taunted New York with suggestions of itself, leaving the city stranded on the platform, peering down the dark tunnel, checking its watch. However, a groundbreaking ceremony last month has, according to officials, irrevocably nudged the legend toward its vast subterranean denouement. There is a New York-bound Second Avenue subway train approaching. This is the story, in glimpses, of one building, the one on East 72nd Street, that will make way for it.

Sally Ardrey

Second-floor one-bedroom

It is the third day of spring, and the windows in Sally Ardrey�s corner apartment are open. Outside, the intersection is alive with engines and dissident horns, tuned to the changing of the traffic lights and borne in on the year�s first drafts of warm air.

�You look up from the desk or the phone, and you have the feeling of the traffic and the life of the city in the room,� she says. Sixteen years in the one-bedroom apartment (after five years in a studio upstairs) have left her no less enamored of its charms. She recently installed a new black and white tile floor in her kitchen: a symbolic gesture of affection toward her longtime home, like a fine last meal served to a condemned prisoner.

�I thought maybe by putting in something smart and happy, I could slow down the process,� she says.

Sifting through a green folder containing articles she has collected about the subway over the years, Ms. Ardrey, 69, stops at a New York Times article from January, just three months before the groundbreaking, bearing the headline, �Rising Costs Put M.T.A. Projects at Risk of Delay.�

�That gave you hope,� she says. �We all thought: �Isn�t that wonderful? Maybe they�ll run out of money.� �

Ms. Ardrey has attended community board meetings and spoken to transit authority representatives who are present to answer questions. Keeping informed, she says, is important, but it comes with a price.

“Psychologically, it’s not so great,” she says. “It’s as if you have to have a very serious life-threatening operation and you have to keep going and talking about it.”

Aaron Lohr

Third-floor studio

As with many tenants, Aaron Lohr’s fondness for his current apartment leaves him skeptical that another will compare. His apartment looks out over East 72nd Street and the Telegraphe Cafe, where Mr. Lohr, a 31-year-old actor, stops in each morning for a cup of coffee.

“For some of these older people who have been here forever,” he says, “I would imagine it’s a lot more difficult to just up and leave.”

His own attitude, however, is casual, drawing confidence from his youth and proclaimed flexibility. “I really haven’t thought about it. I’ll just wait until I’m notified.”

Since this is his third apartment in three years of living in the city, the thought of relocating doesn’t faze him. For Mr. Lohr, formerly of Los Angeles, and other more adaptable tenants of the building, the looming eviction hovers in the realm of inconvenience, not tragedy, though even inconvenience, he says, is less than desirable.

“It would be nice to have a Second Avenue subway,” he says. “But when it affects you, your tune kind of changes.”

Susan Wegemer

Fourth-floor one-bedroom

Susan Wegemer, a 44-year-old account executive at a medical company, who has lived in the building for eight years, expects that rising rents on the Upper East Side and a shrinking pool of rent-stabilized apartments will drive her from the neighborhood. This saddens her, because she claims to know all the doormen.

“Day to day, I try not to think about it; I figure I’ll deal with it when I get an eviction letter,” Ms. Wegemer says. “It’s looming, and you just don’t know when it’s going to come down on you on all sides.”

She notes that the transportation authority has promised to send relocation consultants to help residents locate comparable apartments. She draws quotation marks in the air around the word “comparable.”

Certain aspects beyond square footage and monthly rent, she says, are unlikely to translate from this building to the next. Little quirks, once irritating, have in time become endearing. The apartment’s rooms, Ms. Wegemer says, are all wired on the same electrical circuit. “If you have to use the toaster,” she says, “you can only have one light on.”

In preparation for her eventual eviction, she is about to tackle her spring cleaning. Standing on the gray shag rug in her living room, she squints thoughtfully at her possessions, measuring not only their utility and sentimental value but also their bulk. Reality is setting in: These things will have to be boxed and wrapped, lifted and carried, loaded into trucks and lugged upstairs.

“I don’t want to move stuff that I don’t absolutely love. That filing cabinet,” she says, glaring at it across the room. “I hate that filing cabinet.”

She voices a nervous concern for at least one of her neighbors. “The guy beneath me moved in about six months ago,” she says. “I don’t know if he got the memo.”

Jenner Smith

Third-floor one-bedroom

The neighbor Ms. Wegemer refers to is Jenner Smith, a 23-year-old investment banker who arrived last August after graduating from Gettysburg College. He was unaware of the building’s likely fate when he moved in, but it does not bother him, since he considers the apartment more stopover than destination.

“I’m not investing in this place,” he says, gesturing toward the bare white walls. “It’s pretty barebones.” He has no great attachment to the apartment or the neighborhood, and given the congestion on the Lexington Avenue line, he supports the building of the new subway. “I could move anywhere, and it wouldn’t really make a difference,” he says. “It was a great place to start out.”

Maria Moraitis

Fifth-floor one-bedroom

The apartment in which Maria Moraitis has lived for 20 years once belonged to the sculptor Alexander Calder, she says. She hopes this distinction might persuade the city that the building is a cultural landmark that should be spared the wrecker’s ball.

Beyond this hope, though, she has not given much thought to the possibility of eviction or what might come after.

“I don’t have any plans, and I haven’t heard anything official,” says Ms. Moraitis, a 46-year-old librarian at New York University. What information she does get comes mostly from neighbors who attend meetings and relay information in the stairwells. She has been encouraged by rumors of delays. “They might consider sparing our building,” she says.

Kate Armenta

Second-floor one-bedroom

“I’m totally not involved and non-privy to the whole thing,” Kate Armenta says. “I’m clueless.” Ms. Armenta, a 27-year-old editor at Vogue, has not attended community board meetings and describes herself as someone who doesn’t like to “raise a lot of ruckus.”

As is the case with many of the younger tenants, Ms. Armenta’s short-term designs on her apartment, where she has lived for four years, are attended by a shrugging nonchalance. What she knows she has learned from neighbors who have attended meetings, but these secondhand accounts lack the authority and finality of official reports.

Sarah and Andrew Smith

Fourth-floor one-bedroom

Sarah and Andrew Smith are among the few tenants who believe that they stand to gain from the intrusion of the Second Avenue subway. Far from viewing themselves as victims, they suspect that their decision to move into the building from Queens in 2003 was not so much a prologue to disaster as a stroke of luck.

“We’re kind of happy about the lump sum we’re going to get when they kick us out,” Ms. Smith says.

Mr. Smith, a 30-year-old chef, and Ms. Smith, 31, who works in health care public relations, may use the money to put a down payment on their next apartment, most likely in Brooklyn, though choice of borough is the extent of their post-subway planning. Meanwhile, they try to stay informed, which is not always easy.

“It’s pretty much how bureaucracy functions,” Mrs. Smith says. “It’s noncommittal and moderately informative.”

She admits she may have been lulled into a false sense of comfort, which will end with sudden impact and little warning. And in fact, beyond reading the newspapers and attending the occasional meeting, there’s not much she can do but wait. “It’s hard work to keep up with that kind of stuff,” she says. After a long day at work, thinking about her eventual eviction doesn’t rank high among ways she wants to pass her leisure hours.

Margaret Cormier

Third-floor one-bedroom

“I would have that fixed,” says Margaret Cormier, gesturing toward the front door of her apartment, whose edges are discolored and marred by peeling paint. “But why bother?”

Ms. Cormier, an 81-year-old former nurse at nearby Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has lived in the building for 44 years. “This is a great neighborhood,” she says. “I’ve seen all the changes. When I first came here, it was Czech, German and Hungarian. I remember the Czech men playing cards on the corner.”

The prospect of eviction leaves only a small dent in her cheerful demeanor, but she is afraid rising rents will leave her unable to afford a new apartment on her beloved Upper East Side. “If they don’t put me in this neighborhood,” she says, “I’ll have to leave the city.”

Her disappointment is not for herself alone. Among her chief concerns is that a Second Avenue subway will forever alter the mood and flow of the neighborhood: she envisions clusters of cheap shops and restaurants springing up to lure the swarming subway riders. She points to the 72nd Street stop on the red line across town as an existing example. “It’s going to mess up the whole area,” she says. “And then when it’s done, it will be tacky.”

Pam Berg

Falk Surgical Supplies

A tall man in jeans and a leather jacket strides into Falk Drug and Surgical Supplies, one of three businesses on the building’s ground floor, and calls out, “Pam!”

Pam Berg, a member of the family that owns and operates the business, greets him with a familiar smile. The pharmacy, which caters to the needs of the ailing and the elderly, and which Ms. Berg’s father, Arnie, bought from the Falk family more than 30 years ago, is a place where matters of business are to be preceded by friendly chatter and inquiries into the health and happiness of husbands, wives and kids. And sometimes, less pleasant topics. “What do you think of the Second Avenue subway kicking us out, Pete?” Ms. Berg asks.

Pete, who has dropped in to buy his ailing dog an oxygen mask, offers a response that is loud, negative and unprintable.

The store works with local doctors, hospitals and physical therapists, and it serves customers who in many cases are unable to travel long distances. This makes the prospects of uprooting and relocating particularly worrisome. “What would we do?” she asks. “Our community is here; our customers are here.”

This day the store is bustling with elderly customers. One woman asks for Ms. Berg’s advice on wrist bandages while another returns a wheelchair. In one aisle, a woman is trying out a cane much too long for her. With each careful step, her right shoulder juts upward. Another Berg family employee gently tells the woman to stop walking, and fishes through a barrel of canes to find one that is a better fit.

hkskyline

May 22nd, 2007, 06:31 AM

Mass-transit building boom begins in Manhattan
21 May 2007
USA Today

New York, other metro areas seek to expand public transportation as old systems strain. About 100M more people will live in the USA by 2040; many will take subways and buses.

NEW YORK -- The quest for a subway to carry commuters along Manhattan's Second Avenue long has bordered on the quixotic, the project beset by more fits and starts than a bus lumbering through rush hour.

First proposed in 1920, the Second Avenue line near the East River was shelved by the stock market crash of 1929, by World War II in the 1940s, and then by the 1970s financial crisis that crippled New York City.

Now, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Much of the funding is in place for at least the initial phase of construction, and ground was broken last month for the elusive subway line.

While it may bear the most history, the Second Avenue subway is only one piece of the most significant expansion of New York City's transportation network in more than 60 years.

The nation's largest public-transit system -- 7.5 million trips every weekday -- is undergoing an unprecedented building boom in anticipation of a population surge that is likely to add 1 million more residents to the city over the next two decades.

Several other metropolitan areas are following suit, adding buses, improving routes and laying miles of track to combat traffic congestion and prepare for the 100 million more people expected to live in the USA by 2040.

"Most of those people are going to settle in metro areas ... and that means public transit will have to be one of the things that enable people to settle there," says William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. "There's an understanding (among) the public. They want to have choice in their travel, and they're willing to pay for it."

Concerns about high gasoline prices, congested roads and the growing number of aging drivers who eventually may need other ways to get around are compelling voters to approve ballot measures that create transportation plans and raise taxes to pay for such projects.

Voters stepping up

In November, 21 of 32 ballot measures for transit were approved by voters in 12 states, providing more than $40 billion for local projects, says Bridget Hennessey of the Center for Transportation Excellence, a Washington, D.C.-based clearinghouse that tracks such efforts.

"We're seeing it not just in cities, but even (in) some rural locations," Hennessey says of the proposals, "because they're looking at their population growth in the future and rising gas prices, and they know they need other options."

Some cities are building transportation networks for the first time, while others are ramping up systems that have been in place for decades:

*In Salt Lake County, Utah, where 1 million more people are projected to settle by 2030, transportation officials are planning or constructing seven additional light-rail routes and commuter- rail lines, pushing rail transit for the area to 134 miles from 19. Two routes are set to be completed next spring, the other five by 2015.

"It's a new direction," Chad Saley, spokesman for the Utah Transit Authority, says of efforts to improve public transit in a state that built its first light-rail system only eight years ago. In November, two counties approved ballot measures to raise sales taxes by a quarter of a cent to help fund some of the projects, which will cost more than $2.8 billion.

*Denver plans to add 119 miles of light and commuter rail to its current 35 miles of track, expanding a system that has more than 62,500 boardings on an average weekday. "While we're trying to accommodate growth that's already happened, we're also trying to look ahead," says Pauletta Tonilas, spokeswoman for the transportation expansion known as FasTracks. Construction in the first of six new corridors is scheduled to begin in 2008.

*A sales tax increase Seattle-area voters adopted in November will enable the bus system to increase service by 20% during the next decade, the largest increase in 20 years, says Kevin Desmond, general manager of King County Metro Transit.

Desmond says buses will run more frequently, bus stops will be improved and more hybrid diesel-electric buses will be added to the fleet. With "high gas prices and pretty terrible traffic conditions, more people are choosing the bus service," Desmond says. "It is good, and we need to make it better."

Projects abound in New York

In New York City, transportation projects that are planned or underway include extension of subway service to the far West Side of Manhattan, possibly hastening commercial and residential development in the area. Also on tap: a new Long Island Railroad terminal at Grand Central Station in Midtown and a transit center in Lower Manhattan that will make a labyrinth of subway entrances easier to navigate.

"I believe that the city and the region will not be able to achieve the growth as projected of 1 million people in the city and 3 (million) or 4 million in the region if we do not do these projects," says Elliot Sander, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

To also help accommodate the population surge and tens of thousands of projected new jobs, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the state of New Jersey have committed $3.5 billion toward constructing a new rail tunnel linking Manhattan and New Jersey.

Officials are seeking federal funds for the $7.5 billion tunnel, whose capacity would double the 140,000 passenger trips each weekday in the existing tunnel, says Kris Kolluri, commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Transportation.

The Second Avenue line will be the city's first major subway construction since the 1930s. Not having it "is like having this huge blockage in the heart of the region's center," Sander says.

Elevated train lines operated along Manhattan's East Side for decades, but the last one stopped running in 1955 in anticipation of the Second Avenue subway. Since then, subway service on the East Side has been limited to trains under Lexington Avenue, which have become the city's most crowded.

Many New Yorkers have doubted they would ever see a Second Avenue subway.

"We call it the most famous thing that's never been built in New York City," says Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for Straphangers Campaign, a local advocacy group for subway riders. "I go to community groups and there's a lot of skepticism (about whether) it's going to happen, and I keep telling people that this time they set the bar at a level where they can meet it."

Still, only $3 billion in federal and local funds has been secured of the $3.8 billion needed for the first phase of the project, scheduled to be completed in 2013.

The pace of the remaining three phases on the line, which will ultimately stretch for 8.5 miles, will depend on the ability to secure funding.

Sander is optimistic. "For a project of this nature to have that amount of funding when you're breaking ground," he says, "is the equivalent of rounding third base and heading home."

TalB

May 26th, 2007, 04:22 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/nyregion/25subway.html
2nd Ave. Subway’s Photo Op Cost the M.T.A. $89,000

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: May 25, 2007

How much is a little publicity worth?

For the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the answer would seem to be about $89,000.

That is the amount the authority spent on the April 12 groundbreaking ceremony it held for the Second Avenue subway, according to an accounting by the authority. Whether $89,000, a minuscule amount of the $4 billion budget for the subway project, seems like a lot or a little may depend on your perspective. In simple terms, it is the equivalent of about 1,171 30-day MetroCards.

“I object,” said Randi Kornreich, who was waiting yesterday for a No. 6 train at 96th Street and Lexington Avenue. “I’m a penny pincher, and I think any time they can save money they should and pass it along to the citizen who pays enough in taxes already.”

She added, “I’m not big on pomp and circumstance.”

The cost of the event was relatively high because officials at the authority decided to hold it underground, beneath Second Avenue and 99th Street, in a short section of tunnel that had been dug for the long-planned subway line in the 1970s.

That meant construction crews had to clean the never-used tunnel with power-washing equipment and had to repair a decrepit stairway that descended from a street hatch. A stage was built underground, and additional stairways and platforms were constructed to get visitors safely to the ceremony site. The authority paid $61,000 to an outside contractor for the cleaning, renovations and stage building.

At the same time, workers from New York City Transit wired the tunnel and installed lighting and electrical hookups. That cost $16,000.

There were smaller costs as well. The authority gave the dignitaries and others who attended the groundbreaking a DVD of a short presentation on the project. It spent $1,500 to have 300 copies of the DVD made.

Guests also received a miniature miner’s pick inscribed with the date. The 300 picks were from a company in Tucson, Ariz., at a cost of $1,500.

After a series of speeches, the climax of the ceremony came when Gov. Eliot Spitzer and other dignitaries used shiny steel brick hammers to knock a hole in a concrete panel affixed to the tunnel wall, as photographers and television crews crowded around. The authority did not include the 11 new hammers used at the event in its accounting of the groundbreaking costs, but they sell for about $20 each on Amazon.com.

Other costs included $6,000 for authority police officers to provide security and $3,000 to install and operate the audio-visual system.

“The groundbreaking ceremony for the Second Avenue subway was a historic event that won’t be forgotten by those in attendance and the thousands of New Yorkers who watched on live television,” Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority, said yesterday in a statement. “Costs were incurred to hold a safe event in such a unique setting, but we believe it is important to expose the public to our infrastructure to better understand the transit system that drives the regional economy.”

The ceremony was the kickoff to construction on the first phase of the subway line, which will have stops on Second Avenue at 96th, 86th and 72nd Streets, and at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, and will connect to tracks of the Q line.

The authority and the various transit agencies that preceded it have been trying to build a Second Avenue subway since the 1920s, and the April groundbreaking was at least the fourth for the subway line. The earlier groundbreakings were held in the 1970s.

That long history of frustration softened the views of at least one straphanger yesterday.

“It’s a bit excessive,” Richard Zalk, 64, a lawyer who was waiting for a train yesterday at 96th Street, said of the groundbreaking cost. “I don’t have strong feelings on it either way. If they get the thing done, hallelujah.”

herenthere

May 27th, 2007, 12:33 AM

We really need a penny-pincher to be at the MTA. So many expensive projects go down the drain due to poor materials/design and lack of planning.

TalB

July 7th, 2007, 03:18 AM

http://www.nysun.com/article/57949
Second Avenue Subway Plan Retooled for Grocer's Sake

By Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 6, 2007

On the Upper East Side, where basic supermarkets are scarce, two Food Emporiums that had been slated to shutter to accommodate station entrances and escalators on the Second Avenue subway line are off the chopping block.

Because of the high cost of acquiring the grocer's retail space, as well as vocal community opposition to the plans, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has unveiled a redesigned station entrance so that it does not have to acquire any space along Second Avenue between 85th and 86th Streets that has been occupied by Food Emporium for almost a decade.

"It was the source of tremendous relief for our neighborhood," the chairman of Community Board 8, David Liston, said. "There's no shortage here of high-end stores, but in terms of your basic supermarket with relatively affordable prices, we have very few."

The redesigned station entrance , unveiled to a crowd of relieved Upper East Side residents a few weeks ago, would stand in front of the store instead of replacing it.

The new station entrance includes two glass-paneled doors that would open onto a widened sidewalk in front of the store to accommodate foot traffic, officials said.

Another Food Emporium at 63rd Street and Third Avenue, which was to be converted into an escalator and ventilation facility for the subway line, has also been repositioned, a move that saves the supermarket as well as significant dollars for the MTA, a spokesman, Jeremy Soffin, said.

The real estate costs for the first segment of the subway line, which would stretch to 96th Street from 63rd Street and is slated for completion in 2013, have been reported to cost $245 million. Mr. Soffin said any redesign costs for the station entrance were negligible, and that there were significant savings associated with allowing the supermarkets to keep their retail space and avoid the process of procuring easements to kick them out.

3tmk

July 7th, 2007, 07:09 PM

actually the food emporium is between 86th and 87th but then again, 'tis the Sun

herenthere

July 8th, 2007, 10:45 PM

Does the MTA plan to develop any of the properties they buy into residential or mixed use bldgs with a station entrance at the bottom? Because this model has proved very successful in other cities.

3tmk

July 8th, 2007, 11:41 PM

I think that's the way it's done in HK, but I don't think it is like this here
They have some stations within buildings, but I am highly certain they do not belong to the MTA
The case of this grocery store is within an existing building, I think they would simply buy the retail space, the same way the store has been leasing it so far

TalB

September 16th, 2007, 03:35 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/09/15/2007-09-15_second_ave_subway_line_to_get_125m_in_fe.html
Second Ave. subway line to get $125M in federal funding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY KATHLEEN LUCADAMO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Saturday, September 15th 2007, 4:00 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/09/15/amd_subway_exterior.jpg
A rendering of the exterior of the Second Ave. subway line projected to be finished by 2013.

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/09/15/amd_subway_interior.jpg
The interior of what one of the stations on the new train line may look like.

The Second Ave. subway is a stop away from an infusion of federal money.

The long-awaited rail line got a boost yesterday when the Senate passed the Transportation Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2008, which earmarks $125 million for the project.

The bill also includes $200 million for the MTA's so-called East Side Access project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said.

The bill now goes to a conference committee, where the Senate and House must reach a compromise on funding for transportation projects across the nation.

"The Second Ave. subway line will provide desperately needed relief to the severely stressed Lexington line," Schumer said.

After decades of delay, state and city officials finally broke ground on the $3.8 billion subway line in April. The first phase of the line will have stops on Second Ave. at 96th St., 86th St. and 72nd St., as well as at Lexington Ave. and 63rd St.

The line is scheduled to be completed in 2013, and officials expect it to carry about 200,000 riders a day.

The Second Ave. subway has been touted by officials since the 1920s. The April groundbreaking marked at least the fourth for the subway line.

"Now that the ground has been broken and the commitment is real for the Second Ave. subway, this kind of federal investment is critical to helping the city and state keep the project on track," Clinton said yesterday.

Schumer called the East Side Access project, which will link the LIRR to Grand Central Terminal through the 63rd St. tunnel, "a necessity for Long Island and Queens commuters who spend needless hours every week on their daily commutes."

klucadamo@nydailynews.com

ZZ-II

September 16th, 2007, 08:18 PM

the entrance looks fantastic, really modern :)

hkskyline

September 17th, 2007, 06:32 PM

Very Canary Wharf-feel.

TalB

October 7th, 2007, 10:11 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/nyregion/07subway.html?ref=nyregion
Nerves Exposed, Second Avenue Waits for Its Subway

By ANNE BARNARD
Published: October 7, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/07/nyregion/reflects600.jpg
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

A long-delayed Second Avenue subway may open up what has been a modest enclave of mom-and-pop stores and restaurants in Manhattan.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/07/nyregion/wheelchair650.jpg
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

Melissa Kaye Ortiz at Falk Surgical Supplies with an owner, Perry Berg, holding Ms. Ortiz's dog, Lucy. The store will be torn down to make way for the subway.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/06/nyregion/history190.jpg
Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times

Work was being done for the line in 1977.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/06/nyregion/traffic650.jpg
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

To entice buyers to spend $1 million for one-bedroom apartments on the less glossy eastern edge of the Upper East Side, the builders of a shimmering glass tower going up at 91st Street and First Avenue advertise customized stone countertops, a private fitness center, “expansive sunrise and sunset views” — and the Second Avenue subway.

Now that construction crews have started work on the Second Avenue line after decades of delays, bullish real estate brokers and nervous neighborhood tenants alike expect New York’s first new subway in 50 years to join the market forces that are driving Park Avenue-style prices farther east and replacing quirky Hungarian shops with high-end chain stores.

Ending commuters’ long walk west to the Lexington Avenue subway will bring new cachet to addresses on Second Avenue and eastward — or at least that’s what developers and real estate brokers are betting. Among them are the builders at 91st and First, who point to the subway’s expected opening in 2014 and boldly declare that their tower, christened the Azure, stands at “the heart of the Upper East Side.”

“That’s really been the aversion to that area, that it was so far from transportation,” said Chris Poore, a real estate agent with the Corcoran Group who uses the subway as a favorite talking point when he shows apartment hunters the Cielo, another high-rise of million-dollar condos, at 83rd Street and York Avenue. “People now see the value of moving further east, and what a good investment it is.”

But for many longtime residents and business owners, the neighborhood’s reputation as a bit of a backwater has been one of its attractions: harder to get to, but cheaper and more intimate. Their attitudes veer between the optimistic and the elegiac: They are excited about the subway, but apprehensive about what the neighborhood could lose.

The subway is not the reason that high rents and high-rises have encroached; that has been going on since the 1980s. But some residents suspect the train line’s arrival could be the final step in the transformation of Yorkville and the rest of the eastern Upper East Side from a relatively modest enclave of mom-and-pop stores and restaurants to just another grid of luxury towers and national retailers.

Today, four- and five-story tenements, many rent-regulated, line avenues that show vestiges of Eastern European and German immigration. Many corner lots have sprouted glass towers. But along Second Avenue, old-fashioned businesses like the Heidelberg restaurant, a family-owned hardware store and sellers of Hungarian sausages and pastries jostle with shinier spots like Justin Timberlake’s new barbecue joint.

Next year, some local businesses and lower-income tenants will be forced to move to make way for new subway stations. They fear they will have to leave the neighborhood for good. Construction, which could take years, will strain many more businesses, including sidewalk cafes and restaurants that have given Second Avenue its vibrant streetscape and made it the heart of affordable night life on the Upper East Side.

“There’s going to be more banks and more chain stores and more high-rises with $2 million condos. There’s no more neighborhood,” said Carol Crnobori, who has run Mustang, a Southwestern-style restaurant on 85th and Second, for 14 years. Like many restaurants along the avenue, it is to lose the rights to its sidewalk tables and glassed-in cafe during construction, a blow Ms. Crnobori said could be fatal.

But her bartender, Megan Johnston, 32, confessed that she was looking forward to the new subway to ease the sardine-can crowding on the No. 6 train.

“We need it,” said Ms. Johnston, who lives in the neighborhood. But she added, “If the rents get any higher, I’m going to have to do the Astoria thing.”

Sally Ardrey, 69, is one of the tenants the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must relocate because of the subway project. Even though she will be forced to move from her rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment at 72nd and Second, she supports the subway. But she worries it will kill what little economic diversity remains. When she arrived in 1986, she said, for fancier Upper East Siders west of Third Avenue, “First Avenue might as well have been on Cape Cod.”

But between 1980 and 2000, in the area from Second Avenue to the East River and 70th to 96th Street, the population grew 12.9 percent, compared with 7.6 percent for all of Manhattan, according to an analysis of census data by demographers at Queens College. Rents grew by 41.8 percent, compared with 31.1 percent boroughwide.

Many residents say they will believe in the subway when they see it. City officials first proposed it in the 1920s, to replace the elevated trains on Second and Third Avenues. Twice voters approved it. But funds earmarked in 1951 went instead to improve existing lines; a second bond issue in 1967 led to construction that halted during the city’s financial crisis in the 1970s.

The idea that a subway could spiff up the neighborhood has come and gone. In 1930, a real estate auctioneer told The New York Times that the Second Avenue line would make Yorkville “high-class apartment house territory” and gentrify the blocks in the East 90s that were then lined with breweries. But in the 1950s, letter-writers complained that the chaos of construction would bring down the neighborhood.

Last year, voters approved a bond issue partly financing the first leg of the line, and the federal government has also committed money. Projected to cost $4 billion and open in 2014, it will run down Second Avenue from 96th Street, stopping at 86th and 72nd Streets and then at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue, where it will join existing tracks. Someday, the line is to stretch down Second Avenue to the financial district. Transit officials will not venture to guess when.

Building crews will mostly tunnel underground, out of view. But to build the stations, they will dig up parts of the street.

That means restaurants along swaths of Second Avenue, including from 82nd to 88th Streets and 70th to 74th Streets, will temporarily lose permits for cafes that jut onto the sidewalk. Authority officials do not yet know how long that will last.

The Heidelberg, where German sausages have been served since 1908 and waitresses still wear dirndl skirts, must pull in its outdoor tables, but hopes for the best. The subway will improve business, says the manager, Regina Bryant, if restaurants survive its construction.

At Dorrian’s Red Hand, a red-tableclothed neighborhood fixture, a glassed-in balcony may have to go for a time. Similar inconveniences loom for at least a dozen other neighborhood standbys, like A la Turka on 74th and Second, which faces losing a portion of its seating during the subway construction. “That’s it; end of life,” the manager, Suleyman Secer, said.

For several businesses and residents, the consequences are worse. The authority is using eminent domain to take over and tear down the properties they rent.

Tony’s Di Napoli, a chicken-parmigiana-and-spaghetti Italian family restaurant where former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani courted his current wife, Judith, must move. Its dining room will become a subway entrance. Falk Surgical Supplies, a drugstore that has sold hard-to-find medical products on 72nd and Second for 50 years, will be torn down. Owners of both say they will never find affordable space nearby.

Four buildings will be demolished, forcing out the tenants of 57 mostly rent-regulated apartments. Federal law requires the authority to find them housing in the neighborhood of a comparable type and price. If there is none, the law requires the authority to pay the difference in rent for their new apartments for up to three and a half years, up to $5,265 total. Transit officials vow to find apartments the tenants can afford indefinitely, even if it means going above the maximum amount, but have not determined how they will do that when one-bedrooms routinely rent for more than $2,000.

Regulars at Tony’s saw an ominous sign for their own future.

“We’ve spent every graduation, birthday party and anniversary here,” said Stewart Cohon, 57, a human-resources consultant who lives nearby and was eating with neighbors who fretted that their favorite hangouts would disappear. “This hurts not just Tony’s but everybody in the neighborhood,” Mr. Cohon said.

In the short term, the subway could hurt real estate owners, too, since dust and inconvenience could spook tenants and buyers. But for the long term, said Deborah Gutoff, a senior director at the brokerage firm Eastern Consolidated, “We’re excited.”

Earlier, the area was not as prosperous as the rest of the East Side, but that is changing, Ms. Gutoff said. She expects the subway to further raise the value of retail and residential properties, like the four buildings on 71st and Second, a row of modest old tenements, that she is offering to investors in an estate sale.

And the fate of those buildings, with their rent-regulated tenants and shops like the cheap and beloved Afghan Kebab House? Within a decade, Ms. Gutoff said, a buyer could put up an 80,000-square-foot apartment tower, adding to the Upper East Side’s population boom.

That growth, which began long ago, is one reason the area needs a new train line despite the even higher rents it will bring, said State Senator Liz Krueger, who represents the district: “It’s a chicken and egg thing.”

geoking66

November 14th, 2007, 05:09 AM

We have an apartment on 87 Street and the 86 Street station entrance will be literally across the street. Too bad it means closing down the Food Emporium.

ramvid01

November 16th, 2007, 06:53 AM

It is closing in on about 8 months since they started work here. They said it would take about that much time to move utilities before they would start digging. I wonder if they will start at the beginning of next year. Either way I am anxiously waiting this project to really start digging.

3tmk

November 16th, 2007, 06:59 AM

The works at 96th to 92nd are already taking up 2 lanes, with some pretty tall machines perforating the grounds. They've already gone really deep.
Although some portions of the tunnels have been leftover from the 70s, so they might only need to get to that hole and start all over

ramvid01

November 16th, 2007, 07:01 AM

Yea well I was reading it took 8 months to construct the tunneling machine for the east side access so I do not expect much to happen in the next year or so lol.

TalB

November 20th, 2007, 01:27 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/nyregion/19subway.html?ref=nyregion
U.S. Approves $1.3 Billion for 2nd Avenue Subway

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: November 19, 2007

The long-dreamed-of Second Avenue subway will take another important step toward becoming a real thing of concrete and steel today, as the federal government plans to announce that it has formally approved $1.3 billion in financing for the project’s first phase.

Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said in an interview that the money would be paid out over the next seven years as construction progresses on the subway’s first leg, which will have stops on Second Avenue at 92nd, 86th and 72nd Streets and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began preliminary work on the line after Gov. Eliot Spitzer held a ceremonial groundbreaking in April.

Ms. Peters said the federal money would pay for about one-third of the work on the first phase, which is expected to cost more than $4 billion. The first leg is scheduled to open in 2014, and it will run as an extension of the Q line.

“It will be very good news to people in the area that this long-planned, on-again-off-again project will finally be completed,” Ms. Peters said.

She said the financing for the Second Avenue subway would be the second-largest federal expenditure ever on a single mass transit project. The largest is for construction of a Long Island Rail Road link to Grand Central Terminal, which is also under way. The federal government has pledged $2.6 billion to that project.

Most of the additional money for both the subway line and the commuter rail project will be raised by the sale of bonds.

Plans for the Second Avenue subway call for the line to eventually stretch from Harlem to the financial district. It is to be built in four phases, but there is no schedule for the other three sections of the line. Ms. Peters said the transportation authority would have to apply to her agency for financing of the subsequent phases.

Contractors for the transportation authority have begun to cut a hole in Second Avenue south of 96th Street, where a massive tunnel-boring machine will be assembled.

The Second Avenue subway has been a dream of mayors, straphangers and urban planners since at least the 1920s. In the 1970s, a few isolated sections of tunnel were built, then covered over and abandoned when the city ran out of money.

The transportation authority has said that it is confident it will be able to complete the first phase of the subway.

It has been grappling, however, with rapidly rising costs on its large construction projects. On the subway project, the authority has had to add to its budget for acquiring the real estate needed to allow construction to $245 million, a $54 million increase. And it agreed to a tunnel-drilling contract for $337 million, which was $17 million more than it had budgeted.

IndiansUnite

November 28th, 2007, 05:41 PM

X-posting from the NY subway thread in the subways forum-

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/6965/secondavenuesubwaymapvz0.jpg

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/1978/sasphasingqo4.jpg

Here's a rendering of a station from DMJM Harris's website(they are designing the subway line) (http://www.dmjmharris.com/MarketsAndServices/46/71/index.jsp)
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/1268/4673nr9.jpg

72nd street station entrance -
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6687/72ndstreetrendertx3.jpg

and some more -

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/8270/image1934av3.jpg

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/4467/stationentrancesbigip6.jpg

from the economist-
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/6039/cus965fn9.gif

And some more.. Albeit a little too small, they still give a idea of what's in store for NY

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/4041/image3341wh2.jpg

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9637/192ndavesubwayzt6.jpg

http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/240/2ndavenuesubwayct8.jpg

Different phases of construction of the Second Ave Line -
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2636/0708edit1ky0.gif

IndiansUnite

November 28th, 2007, 05:43 PM

Found some more renderings of the Second Ave. subway line from FXFOWLE's website: (http://www.fxfowle.com/)

The Second Avenue Subway line will run from 125th Street to Whitehall Street, through sixteen new stations. FXFOWLE was the architectural lead for the preliminary design phase of the project which defined system characterized by environmental responsibility, high-performance design, neighborhood integration, and maintainability. The line will have a new, distinct identity, and each station will be welcoming, contemporary, secure, and accessible--a fitting realm for the city's future. The project was awarded a Green Design Award from the City of New York / EPA and was published in ID Magazine.

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/2869/2ndave1uh6.jpg

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/5837/2ndave2qm2.jpg

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/60/2ndave3lm0.jpg

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/2492/2ndave4np2.jpg

86th Street station entrance
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7632/2ndave5yw4.jpg

herenthere

November 29th, 2007, 01:19 AM

Looks interesting...not too fond of the renderings by DMJM Harris though...

koolkid

November 29th, 2007, 06:40 AM

Thanks a bunch for those renders. I like it how they plan on putting the platform in the center rather than on the sides. That way it'll be much more easier to transfer back incase someone accidentally skips their stop.

johnt_gr

November 29th, 2007, 02:14 PM

Excellent renderings! Hope it gets built soon!

Dale

December 4th, 2007, 08:09 AM

So, have I got this right ? Precisely three new stations will be built by ... 2014 ?

herenthere

December 5th, 2007, 01:43 AM

So, have I got this right ? Precisely three new stations will be built by ... 2014 ?

That is correct...and pathetic compared to other planned lines in other parts of the world which are so much longer. I guess it has more to do with financial issues and having to avoid foundations of nearby bldgs?

TalB

December 14th, 2007, 09:29 PM

Click here (http://mta.info/capconstr/sas/construction.htm) for what construction will be like for this month on the SAS.

TalB

January 1st, 2008, 02:16 AM

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12312007/news/regionalnews/trouble_in_store_from_2nd_ave__subway_110496.htm
TROUBLE IN 'STORE' FROM 2ND AVE. SUBWAY

By KEVIN FASICK, DAN KADISON and PATRICK GALLAHUE

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12312007/photos/new02a.jpg
HURTING:Vicky Schreier says Second Avenue retailers need help.

December 31, 2007 -- Upper East Side business owners say they're being railroaded by construction of the Second Avenue subway, with the massive tunneling for the $3.8 billion project drilling into their profits.

Shop owners on Second Avenue between 91st and 96th streets complain that their sidewalk space has been more than cut in half by guardrails and concrete barricades that are keeping customers away.

"It cut down my traffic tremendously," said Marcelo Ronchini, who owns Nina's Pizzeria on Second Avenue between 91st and 92nd streets. "I've lost 20 percent of my revenue."

John Ng, manager of Hokkaido restaurant, at the corner of East 94th Street, said, "Business has dropped at least $20,000 a month. We're trying to wait it out. What can we do?"

And Vicky Schreier, owner of Rainbow Ace Hardware at 94th Street, said that her business, too, was down and she wanted the city, along with the MTA, to come up with ideas to help the shops.

"There is a significant drop in business," Schreier said. "We understand it's good for New York, the good of people, but it's not good for us."

A coalition of the merchants and lawmakers from the area are now in discussions with city officials about what to do to offset their losses.

"Eventually, the Second Avenue subway will bring extra traffic to these businesses, but if they can't survive the construction period then we haven't done our jobs," said Assemblyman Jonathan Bing (D-Manhattan).

The business owners have met with the city's Department of Small Business Services and the MTA, and Bing said the city or state may offer low-interest loans or institute a tax-free zone in the affected areas.

An SBS spokeswoman said, "Our Business Outreach Team has met with business owners in the area and will continue to offer them assistance navigating government processes, facilitating access to their storefronts, accessing financing, and refining their business and marketing plans."

The Second Avenue subway will link East 125th Street to lower Manhattan. The first phase of the project, extending the Q line from 63rd to 96th streets, is expected to be completed in 2014.

But by that point, the merchants could be driven under.

"I don't know how many of us are going to survive seven more years," said Giuseppe Pecora, owner of Delizia on East 92nd Street, at a meeting of the merchants last week.

dan.kadison@nypost.com

The Urban Politician

January 16th, 2008, 06:36 PM

X-posting from the NY subway thread in the subways forum-

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/6965/secondavenuesubwaymapvz0.jpg

^ This is an incredible as HELL project. I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, but I have a quick question:

Why are both the Q and T trains running local through the upper east side? Wouldn't it make sense to have one of them run express from 125th-72nd, at least?

sfgadv02

January 17th, 2008, 01:42 AM

^ This is an incredible as HELL project. I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, but I have a quick question:

Why are both the Q and T trains running local through the upper east side? Wouldn't it make sense to have one of them run express from 125th-72nd, at least?

The new line will only have 2 tracks, so there won't be an express unless there are 4 tracks.

koolkid

January 17th, 2008, 05:02 AM

MrColombia

January 17th, 2008, 07:10 AM

i def. like the entrances. its a big big upgrade to the looks of our subways.

Gil

January 17th, 2008, 09:21 PM

I think he knows that. He's trying to say that it would be a better idea if one of the two subway lines went express from 72nd to 125th instead of sharing the 5 stops... I too think it would be a good idea. The F and the V lines share quite a handful of stops, this actually sort of helps during peak hours.

Which section of the F and V lines? Through Queens the F trains run on the same track as the express E trains, sharing the same stops as the E train. (The Manhattan stretch is local stopping for both lines.) As was noted by sfgadv02, the Q/T line will only have 2 tracks, so no express bypasses.

If four tracks don't work, could three? That way you'd have peak period express trains like on the 7. One more far-fetched plan would be to build express tracks under the local ones. The plans have already been set in motion, so I don't know how feasible this might be in the long run if the need does demonstrate itself. If there were express stops, which ones would they be?

koolkid

January 17th, 2008, 11:06 PM

Which section of the F and V lines?
The F and the V share about 8 stops from 2nd avenue to Rockefeller center.

As was noted by sfgadv02, the Q/T line will only have 2 tracks, so no express bypasses.
Oh yeah, that's right. It's more likely that they will share the same tracks. I thought both lines would have their own sets of tracks but w/e..

One more far-fetched plan would be to build express tracks under the local ones. The plans have already been set in motion, so I don't know how feasible this might be in the long run if the need does demonstrate itself. If there were express stops, which ones would they be?
All that for only five stations? I doubt it, although it would be good to just add the express tracks in the center with the local ones on the sides or the other way around.

sfgadv02

January 18th, 2008, 01:43 AM

If there were express stops, which ones would they be?

I would say 96th St and 125th st.

3tmk

February 20th, 2008, 06:22 AM

I read an article this weekend (I can't remember where I read it), about businesses around 2nd avenue south of 96th street that have been losing revenue, and some even closing, due to all the construction.
And the MTA telling them this has only been the beginning!
Of course the area isn't of the poorest in the city, but come to think of it, besides destroying a whole neighborhood like they did for the Lincoln center, this is the second best way to have a full gentrification. Chase people with the construction. And then sell everything at a good price when the subway is done and the demand skyrockets

TalB

February 28th, 2008, 05:07 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/02/27/2008-02-27_e__f_in_line_for_robotrain__but_a_2nd_av.html
E & F in line for Robotrain - but a 2nd Ave. subway? Wait'll 2015

BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, February 27th 2008, 4:00 AM

Scrunched subway riders will have to wait yet another year for the long-delayed Second Ave. subway, sources said Tuesday night.

Faced with higher than anticipated construction costs, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is poised to push back the completion date for the first segment until 2015, according to the sources.

The MTA - which will announce the findings of a review of its mega projects and unveil a new capital plan today - also is set to delay the completion date of the Long Island Rail Road extension to Grand Central Terminal to 2015.

In 2005, the first phase of the Second Ave. subway, from 96th St. and Second to the existing station at Lexington Ave. and 63rd St., was projected to be carrying riders in 2012. By December, officials were predicting 2014. Now, it's pushed back another year. The city announced plans to build the line in 1929.

The MTA is in a "tough situation," one transportation source said. "The question is whether government will be prepared to recognize the importance of the transit system to the region" by providing new funding.

The MTA's five-year capital program includes plans to install a high-tech signal and communications system that essentially would allow E and F trains to be run by computers on the Queens Blvd. line, sources said Tuesday .

Such a system, largely in place but not yet fully operational on the L line between Brooklyn and Manhattan, would enable transit managers to run trains closer together and with greater frequency, officials have said.

Motormen on the so-called Robotrains will monitor onboard control screens and would take over train operations if technical problems arose.

pdonohue@nydailynews.com

TalB

May 18th, 2008, 08:53 PM

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05152008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/menace_on_2nd_ave_110964.htm
MENACE ON 2ND AVE

WILL SUBWAY JOB EVER FINISH?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05152008/photos/op0b.jpg
B'berg: Must ensure money's there for job.

May 15, 2008 -- IF GOV. Paterson, Mayor Bloomberg and MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger don't act fast, the Second Avenue Subway will wind up a fiasco like the Fulton Street Transit Center - but on a much grander scale.

The Fulton project has reduced a Downtown blockfront to rubble, dug up streets, ruined businesses and created chaos - all without even starting on the main job, untangling the station's "maze." For good measure, the MTA gave up completely on the domed pavilion that was to be the project's signature element.

The work on Second Avenue is already traumatizing stores, businesses and residents. Of course, the project is a truly worthy endeavor (unlike the Fulton scheme). If completed, it will justify the hardships.

But only if it gets done.

And - absent urgent and immediate attention from Albany and City Hall - the project will surely face a moment of truth like the MTA's recent admission that it can't finish the Fulton job, even at nearly twice the original estimated cost.

If Second Avenue founders as Fulton has, the devastation won't be limited to just a few blocks of chewed-up streets. We'll have three miles' worth of demolished buildings and shuttered stores and restaurants - and diminished property values for a whole swathe of the Upper East Side.

All that - without actually getting the new subway line.

In the project's "Phase 1," tracks start at 105th Street, run down Second Avenue and link with the F station at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street; 96th, 86th and 72nd streets will have new stations.

The MTA's capital-budget summary (released in February) farcically underbudgets all that work at $4.34 billion. And it takes only common sense to appreciate what a pittance that is.

The MTA says it needs $1.1 billion for the Fulton project - not to lay an inch of track, buy new subway cars or build new stations, but just to rearrange underground platforms and build a pedestrian tunnel to Ground Zero. And in all likelihood, $1.1 billion won't be enough, thanks to galloping building-trade inflation (as much as 5 percent, by some estimates).

By that light, it doesn't take an engineer or an accountant to grasp that $4.34 billion for the Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 is a joke.

No one really knows how much the line will cost - yet the MTA has already gone into occupation-army mode on Second Avenue, digging up five blocks below 96th Street. Stores have lost customers and are struggling to survive. Landlords and residents face eviction.

The media has been mostly oblivious - but that might change when excavation reaches celebrity watering hole Elaine's, about two blocks south of the most advanced dig.

What of the time frame? The MTA recently pushed its completion target to 2013, just five years away. That's wildly optimistic: The MTA's last new line (linking Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street to Roosevelt Island and Queens) was about the length of Second Avenue's Phase 1 and also has three stations. It took 20 years to finish.

The Second Avenue plight isn't hopeless. Hemmerdinger, a real-estate man by trade, is highly regarded for his integrity and fiscal acumen. And ex-MTA head Richard Ravitch, whom Paterson recently tapped to make sense of the MTA's financial chaos, did vital work to get the then-woeful subway system back on its feet in the early '80s.

Former Govs. George Pataki and Eliot Spitzer, former MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow and former MTA capital-projects chief Mysore Nagaraja left a mess behind. Hemmerdinger and Ravitch must cut through the baloney to get a brutally honest number on how much the new line will cost.

And then Paterson and Bloomberg must identify a way to cover those costs, no matter what surprises the economy holds in store. They must produce nothing less than a guarantee the job will get done within a reasonable time frame, with protocols that will be binding on their successors.

If they can't come up with a viable plan, then work should stop before Second Avenue turns into a mess worse than Fulton Street - one from which a huge slice of Manhattan might never recover.