NEW YORK — Extension of New York’s Second Avenue Subway project, which will add stations in East Harlem, has received a boost from a new funding agreement signed on Saturday.
The $3.4 billion grant — “the largest Capital Investment Grant in the history of the program,” according to a social media post by U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer — was signed in a Saturday morning ceremony adjacent to the Harlem-125th Street Metro-North and subway stations, with those in attendance including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
It was the second straight day for a major rail infrastructure event and funding announcement in New York. On Friday, Buttigieg and Hochul took part in a ceremony marking the start of work on part of the Hudson Tunnel project; at that event, Schumer announced the tunnel project would receive an additional $3.8 billion in federal funding [see “Hudson Tunnel project lands more federal funding …,” Trains News Wire, Nov. 4, 2023].
The project will extend the Q line subway from its current endpoint at 96th Street, with new stations at 106th, 116th, and 125th street. The 125th Street station will provide connections to Metro-North and the existing 4,5, and 6 subway lines.
“When people talk about transit deserts, and also transportation equity and racial equity, they seemed to forget about this area for a long time,” Hochul said. “… Finally, people recognize that this is a community that matters, and it matters deeply.”
The New York Post reports the grant application for the subway project has been stalled since 2018, a year after the first phase of the project opened. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began soliciting the first contract for the project — to relocate utilities ahead of construction — earlier this year [see “New York MTA takes first step …,” Trains News Wire, July 6, 2023].
The website Gothamist reports the $3.4 billion grant will cover less than half the cost of the 1.8-mile extension. The project is currently estimated to cost $7.7 billion, which places it among the world’s most expensive transit projects on a per-mile basis.
Gothamist reports Buttigieg both defended the price and acknowledged the cost issues with major U.S. public works projects. “America has struggled to deliver infrastructure as cost effectively as other places around the world, “ he said, “which is why a major line of effort in our department is to find all of the means that we have, whether that’s on the bureaucratic side or on the engineering side, to accelerate and improve the cost effectiveness of our infrastructure spending.”
There were elevated railways on 2nd and 3rd Aves. The last of these in Manhattan was removed in 1955. Neither was replaced by rapid transit. The Bronx portion of the 3rd Ave El lasted until 1973.
In 2017, NYCTA opened the first part of the IND 2nd Ave Subway from 72nd St to 96th St.
There is not a “transit desert” here. There is four track subway, but there is more demand for transit than has been available since two rapid transit lines were closed without replacement.
Bringing racial issues and divides into this dicussion on building the 2nd Avenue Subway is so idiotic and silly. It doesn’t matter if little green men from Mars are living in NYC. What really matters and the discussion should be why it has taken almost 100 years to have semblence of a subway line running up 2nd Avenue and this short extension which is going take billions to build and years to complete. That is the real issue here. Also how many transit bond issues were approved by the voters of NYC through the years to fund construction only to have the politicians of New York City take that money and either put it in their own pockets, pay off some of their friends and cronies and then even take that money reserved for the 2nd Avenue Subway and use it for other purposes and expenses and of course no accounting or auditing of where this money actually went. It’s not about race or culture like the so called reformers and Woke culture want to use to further their own agenda. In New York City its about greed, corruption, mishandling of money and funding and lack of accountibility and responibility. Dishonest public servants and politicans are the cause of why there is no real 2nd Avenue Subway and never will be.
Joseph C. Markfelder
People are so negative.
The costs of building a subway are exponentially higher than they were from 1904 to 1940. Additionally, the IRT and BMT were private building projects, while the IND was city built with help from FDRs public works projects. All the costs were split.
2. It’s a transit desert when you have to struggle to fit on the Lexington Avenue. Couple that with how many trains go up and down during rush causing endless delays while you struggle to breath through the crush. It only gets worse at 86th and 59th. The Second Avenue is essential to taking pressure off the Lex. People coming from the Bronx will have the option of switching to the Second Avenue at 125th
The Upper West has 2 lines.It has much less of a crush than the East Side. They’re also speaking of extending the line to 125th and Broadwat or St. Nicholas Avenue. Manhattan desperately needs more cross-town service.
the sly comments about race ate not needed or appreciated in the year 2023.
I’m not negative about building the Second Avenue subway. I posted that it should have been built sixty years ago. But wasn’t.
It’s the city/ state authorities that brought up race. As if black Americans and Black immigrants only live along East 125th Street. There are black neighborhoods throughout Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn, along with increasing diversified Staten Island.
Throgs Neck East Bronx (Itaian American) has no subway. The massive Coop City East Bronx (Jewish and other whites, when built) has no subway. Not everything in this 2023 world is about black people.
Yeh, ” transit desert” with the IRT Lex Ave Line (4-5-6) 2 blocks away.
East Bronx is a transit desert. LaGuardia Airport is a transit desert. LexAve (4-5-6) is overloaded but New York has known that for a century.
As it will be remembered, the Lexington Avenue line is the busiest in the MTA transit system.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Good luck to all seeing the 2nd Avenue Subway Extension project completed!
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
The 2nd Avenue Stubway extension crawls forward. Years ago whole and entire subway lines stretching from one end of the borough to the other were built as well as lines and tunnels connecting the other boroughs were built with half or less than the cost of it will take to finish this small piece of a line that almost 100 years ago was part of a very ambitious line running from downtown Manhattan up to the Bronx. The orginal plan was for the 2nd Avenue Subway to replace both the 2nd and 3rd Avenue Els in Manhattan and provide some relief to the overcrowded and intolerable conditions on the Lexington Avenue Subway. Now whatever was lft of that plan consists of a small segment of the subway and only 2 tracks down from 4 tracks and stations that are built far apart from each other. The other segement south of 63rd Street while still on the drawing boards that would run to Water Street in downtown Manhattan is not even mentioned or being considered for construction and of course I doubt that any public funding is ever going to be given out for that part of the line. We will never see that built and operated in our lifetimes. As I have said in other posts, New York City talks big, draws up big plans for transit improvement and expansion and construction of new lines but nothing ever comes of these plans and ideas. There was also a plan to build a subway station at 41st Street and 10th Avenue for the #7 extension to Hudson Yards but that was scrapped no money to build it. There is an actual casing and shell built into the tunnel that the 7 train goes through if someday this station ever gets built but another pipe dream and imaginary plan. We shall see how long it takes to actually build and complete this extension of the famous 2nd Avenue Stubway. By the way the tracks do go up to 106th Streeet and parts of the tunnel under 2nd Avenue are already there as part of earlier construction in the 1970s before financial woes and other issues hit NYC and put a stop to all construction. They can use that unfinished segement to get started on the construction but I remeber reading somewhere that any construction won’t begin until 2027 at the earliest. A waste of time and effort and billions of dollars wasted on such a small amount of actual mileage and trackage
Joseph C. Markfelder
‘transportation equity and racial equity’. Useless buzzwords for having to walk a few blocks to a subway. The project is currently estimated to cost $7.7 billion, which places it among the world’s most expensive transit projects on a per-mile basis. Some inequity here.
Racial equity. Blah Blah Blah. It’s taken sixty years to get to the Harlem extension started. God knows when it will be finished. That’s what we should be talking about.