NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has completed major construction on East Side Access, the $11 billion project bringing the Long Island Rail Road to a new station beneath Grand Central Terminal, and test trains will begin running this summer.
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the completion of construction work on project which will cut commute times from Queens by as much as 40 minutes per day.
“I’ve been through a lot of difficult infrastructure projects during my time in government,” Cuomo said in a press release, “and while this project may have been one the most difficult to get accomplished, its completion will have a huge impact on New York’s economy and vibrancy for generations to come and serve as yet another example of what New Yorkers can do when we put our minds to something.”
Construction began in 2006 for a project originally estimated to cost $3.5 billion with a completion date of 2011. Janno Lieber, president of MTA Construction and Development, said Thursday the project will be completed next year.
“When I came to the MTA in 2018 one of my first actions was to do an in-depth review of East Side Access,” Lieber said. “We doubled down on this project — expressing faith in its fundamentals but overhauling the way we were pursuing it. In the past, when challenges were encountered, the answer was to push back the project completion date. We put an end to that and committed this project would be completed in 2022 as had been promised. Today’s announcement is an affirmation that our approach is working.”
Lieber recently discussed the project, and other major MTA infrastructure work, in an interview with Trains.com. That interview is available here.
The 350,000-square-foot LIRR passenger concourse will include 25 retail storefronts, WiFi and cell service, and digital signage with real-time train information. It will double the LIRR capacity into Manhattan, allowing up to 24 trains per hour.
With all respect to this project – it is a great project – what we have here is a failure to communicate. It takes billions of dollars and tens of years to solve one New York City transportation problem while the others wait their turn.
New York’s fixed-rail transportation system – hundreds of miles of subways and railroads – took about forty years to build. Now it takes forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years to scratch away at one project such as the Second Avenue Subway.
We’re now building to much higher standards, notably disabled access, but also clean restrooms, digital information, and better food and retail concessions. Even so at the rate we’re going, New York’s transportation systems will crumble to dust a lot faster than they will be replaced.