Second Avenue Subway on Track

[lofter1]

Complete hogwash (and ANN MARIE BIBAWY wonders why Staten Islanders get no respect ;) ) ...
... At one point, Staten Island was a part of New Jersey, but New York and New Jersey were once, to the disbelief of many, fighting for this, anything but small, piece of land. It was settled by a boat race around the island, which was won by New York. On January 1, 1898 Staten Island become part of what is the amazing state of New York, and The Big Apple, the center of the world. If New Jersey had won, and Staten Island had become part of the state of New Jersey, we would have at least had an identity. I have this to say to the residents of the City of New York: Do not go around annexing landmasses and then deny association to them! It is like leaving a child without a parent!

[spatulashack]

Good news! The MTA has FINALLY updated their Second Ave. Subway pages that have been "under construction" for several months now. You can see it here:

http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/capconstr/sas/index.html

I can't believe this thing is finally being built. Well, the first phase is being built. As for the rest, who the hell knows.

[TonyO]

NY Post

BIG DIG ON 2ND AVE. SUBWAY SET FOR '08


By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter

September 26, 2006 -- Digging for the long-planned Second Avenue Subway will finally start in 2008 - but it may run straight into Native American villages and burial grounds, it was revealed yesterday.
The MTA plans to award the tunneling contract for the first phase of the project later this year, officials said yesterday.

But when digging begins in 2008, archaeologists will be on hand to halt the massive tunnel-boring machine at the first sign of artifacts dating back hundreds of years, the officials said.

A consultant hired by the MTA told the agency that there is the potential for Native American and Colonial artifacts along the route, which was once closer to the shoreline than it is today, said Amanda Sutphin of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

"You don't know what is there until you start digging and it can actually be tested," Sutphin said. "The topography of Manhattan was very different back then. Hills were leveled and valleys filled in."

Phase 1 of the project calls for the construction of stations at East 96th, 86th, and 72nd streets, and a connection to existing tracks at 63rd Street.

A giant hole will be dug between 92nd and 95th streets to allow the tunnel-boring machine to launch under ground, said Mysore Nagaraja, president of MTA Capital Construction.

In addition to archaeologists, consultants will monitor the sound and seismic vibrations to minimize the effect on people who live and work nearby.

More than 70 years in the planning, the Second Avenue Subway is practically a historic relic in itself, but officials say that the first phase is on pace to be completed in 2013.

Although this $3.8 billion portion will not fulfill the promise of the planned complete line from 125th Street to lower Manhattan, after years of false starts, the project is finally happening.

"It's become a reality," Nagaraja said. "Now we are building the Second Avenue Subway."

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

http://www.gothamist.com/attachments/jen/2006_09_tline.jpg

[MrSpice]

NY Post

BIG DIG ON 2ND AVE. SUBWAY SET FOR '08


By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter

September 26, 2006 -- Digging for the long-planned Second Avenue Subway will finally start in 2008 - but it may run straight into Native American villages and burial grounds, it was revealed yesterday.
The MTA plans to award the tunneling contract for the first phase of the project later this year, officials said yesterday.



Not clear to me why they cannot start in 2007.

[BPC]

Not clear to me why they cannot start in 2007.

government

[Eugenious]

NY Post

BIG DIG ON 2ND AVE. SUBWAY SET FOR '08


By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter



What did I say...

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/images/statusicon/post_old.gif June 23rd, 2006, 10:39 AM
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrSpice
Any news about the Second Avenue Subway project? Does anyone know when they are going to start digging the tunnels and putting up subway stations along 2nd Avenue?


Not anytime soon :) Atleast not untill 2008, if they open any part of it by 2012 I'll eat my tie.




Told ya so

[nycla3]

I dunno...this seems to make more sense to me along 2nd Ave. They promised us something like this at the '64 World's Fair ... Futurama.;-)

[MikeW]

I keep seeing them drilling cores alond 2nd, so they're getting ready to do something.

[Gregory Tenenbaum]

Drilling cores on 2nd!

Now that is kind of exciting - something may be about to happen.

[Ed007Toronto]

Probably testing the soil and seeing how far down the bedrock is. No different than the core samples they do before construction of a new tower. All prep for the real work that starts in 2008.

[pianoman11686]

From FXFowle's website:

[Fahzee]

I like the skylights in the third photo

[Fahzee]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Second Ave. subway plan picks up speed
BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

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.

[Eugenious]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

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.

Kalikow's only redeeming quality is that he is dead set on establishing a legacy for himself and thus wants SAS and LIRR built. Problem is that when these public works projects become legacy projects they are bound to get killed when the next appointed figure head is determined to muck up the previous guys legacy.

[LeCom]

Hard to believe New York will finally have subway stations that don't look like they are about to fall apart from all the rust and neglect.

[ablarc]

Hard to believe New York will finally have subway stations that don't look like they are about to fall apart from all the rust and neglect.
Give 'em time. The rust will come just after the neglect.

[lofter1]

Yep ^^^ All the newly-refurbished stations were once shiny and new -- then become disgusting and derelict before the recent rehabs.

In NYC the cycle will eventually repeat itself -- and ablarc's often asked question "what happens to glossy when the gloss is gone" will be answered by the sorry look of dirty glass curtain walls throughout NYC (dirty bricks & limestone at least have some character).

[mkeit]

Take a look at the newest stations-On the E along Archer Ave -to see what messes new stations turn into.

[Fahzee]

What makes me more upset are the newly restored "historic" stations that are already going to pot

check out 181st on the 1 - they did a beautiful job back in 95 (or 96, I forget), but it's already fallen prey to vandalism - and my guess is that it will be another 50 years before they go and fix it.

My hope is that these new "state of art" stations can fixed up with a good cleaning from the power sprayer - probably wishful thinking, but still....

[Eugenious]

Take a look at the newest stations-On the E along Archer Ave -to see what messes new stations turn into.

I guess that's why they don't bother rehabing the Smith-9th Sts, and 4th Avenue stations on the F line.

[spatulashack]

The E-Line Archer Ave. Stations are not all that bad. They were built in 88' and considering they are almost 20 years old, I think they look about right. Basically, it's just the lighting that needs work. As for these new glass stations, I don't think it will be too big of a problem considering they will be on the upper east side. Even the Fulton Street Transit Center shouldn't have too much tagging given its location.

[mkeit]

As you point out, the lighting is too dim. They are dirty and badly maintained. The original construction was shoddy-3 contracts are underway to replace elevator and escalators at Sutphin, Roosevelt Is and Parsons and all of the veltilation systems. .

Even though work was done, the leakage of water from the fish stores above still permeates Sutphin Blvd. But at least they were able to remove the huge plastic sheets that covered the ceiling.

[Transic]

http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/MTA_gives_11M_to_Parks_Dept_to_start_Second_Avenue _Subway_/5974.html

MTA gives $11M to Parks Dept. to start Second Avenue Subway

by patrick arden / metro new york
DEC 4, 2006

East Harlem — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will pay $11 million to the Parks Dept. for the use of a playground at 96th Street to serve as a staging area for construction of the Second Avenue Subway.

“We couldn’t build a new playground, because there isn’t any real estate available in a neighborhood like that,” said Joshua Laird, chief of planning for the Parks Dept. “So we’re fixing up other parks in the area that are going to receive more use.”

Yet the three parks getting the money — Thomas Jefferson, Marcus Garvey and Harlem River Park — are between 16 to 31 blocks away from the Marx Brothers Playground at 96th and Second.

“Why should these funds be diverted from East Harlem to another part of town?” asked Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates.

“These parks need the money — Marcus Garvey needs tens of millions of dollars,” Croft said. “But Rupert Park is only a couple of blocks away from the impacted area, and it needs capital improvements, too. The problem is there’s no formal process, or public input, for dealing with mitigation funds, so these decisions are made ad hoc.”

Mitigation agreements allow for the private use of public land, but, Croft complained, without a “transparent” protocol, the outcomes are “arbitrary.”

Take East River Park, where Con Edison construction has long delayed the planned renovation of the waterfront promenade.

Though no mitigation payment was made to the Parks Dept., the utility removed an old oil line and relocated feeders that allowed repairs to proceed. The disrupted parkland will be restored once construction is complete.

“I know that Con Edison feels strongly that when it’s doing its job of providing electric service to the citizens of New York it shouldn’t have to pay mitigation on top of that,” said Laird.

“If they’re using parkland for a commercial purpose, they should be paying mitigation,” Croft replied. “This is parkland that hasn’t been available to the public for many years. The project should have gone through state alienation legislation.”

The deal for the MTA to use Marx Brothers Playground was signed a year ago, said Laird, but it was negotiated in 2004, when the state alienated the park for a period of eight years.

But the public knew nothing of the agreement until Croft learned about it recently. Community representatives “were not at the table during negotiations,” Laird acknowledged.

“The MTA was trying to get the approvals necessary,” he said. “They had the lead in terms of taking responsibility for negotiating with the community.”

MTA?pays for playground ‘associates’

Laird noted six playgrounds will also get associates funded by the MTA for the duration of the project. “The associates are attendants, essentially someone who’s there as an overseer,” said Laird. “We thought children who normally play at the 96th Street playground were going to be displaced to other, nearby playgrounds, creating more of a burden.”

[TonyO]

NY Post

PA EYES $2B 'GIFT' TO MTA
By JEREMY OLSHAN

December 14, 2006 -- The Port Authority may give the MTA $2 billion to use for either the Second Avenue Subway or the East Side Access connection linking Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, officials said yesterday.

The gift - part of the authority's 10-year, $26 billion capital plan expected to be approved today - would match the $2 billion the agency is spending on a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, officials said.

That project will double the rail capacity of NJ Transit coming into Penn Station.

[krulltime]

^ That is sweet!

[Deimos]

forgive me for being a conspiracy theorist/paranoid nyer/whatever.... what does the PA get out of this? Why are they being so generous?

[BPC]

Tit-fot-tat. NY and NJ both have vetoes over all PA expenditures. That means if NJ gets a dollar, NY gets a dollar. NJ now desperately needs $2B for its new Hudson River train tunnel, so in order to get it approved PA has to find some worthy receipient of an equal-sized gift on the NY side. The 2nd Avenue subway is by far the most meritorious choice.

[antinimby]

I get a feeling the MTA will somehow make those 2 billion bucks go a lot less further than it should.

[Transic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/nyregion/19transit.html?ref=nyregion

Long Planned, Transit Projects Get U.S. Help

By WILLIAM NEUMAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=WILLIAM NEUMAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=WILLIAM NEUMAN&inline=nyt-per)
Published: December 19, 2006

After decades of planning and dreaming by officials, two major expansions of the city’s mass transit system took important steps forward yesterday, with the federal government promising to pay billions of dollars for a Long Island Rail Road connection to Grand Central Terminal and for a Second Avenue subway.

Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said final approval had been granted to allow $2.6 billion in federal funds to be spent on construction of the Long Island Rail Road link, which will give commuters on the railroad a direct ride to the east side of Manhattan. Speaking at a news conference in the main hall of Grand Central, she said it was the most money the federal government had ever committed to a mass transit project.

She said her department had also approved $693 million for the new subway on Second Avenue. In both cases, the federal money is only a portion of the total costs.

Work in Queens on the Long Island Rail Road project has already begun, and the Second Avenue work is to begin next year. Both projects are to be finished in 2013, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.

The Long Island Rail Road project, known as East Side Access, will create a new spur from the railroad’s main line at Sunnyside that will terminate at Grand Central. In the future passengers will be able to choose between trains that go either to Grand Central or to Pennsylvania Station.

The project involves digging new tunnels in Manhattan and Queens that would connect to an existing rail tunnel under the East River, at 63rd Street. In Queens the tunnels would link up with the Long Island Rail Road tracks. Beneath Manhattan, the tunnels would head across town, turn south at Park Avenue and end about 150 feet below Grand Central, at a vast new underground concourse carved out of the rock.

Currently, the only Manhattan stop for the Long Island Rail Road is at Pennsylvania Station, on the West Side, though the railroad estimates that about half the 106,000 riders who arrive at Penn Station each morning are actually headed to the East Side. The new terminal would cut those riders’ daily commute by a total of about 40 minutes, officials said.

Officials say the East Side Access will also increase service and ease crowding on the Long Island Rail Road. By lowering the railroad’s use of tracks at Pennsylvania Station, it would reduce backups for other Long Island riders and also for Amtrak and New Jersey Transit (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_jersey_transit/index.html?inline=nyt-org) commuters who use the station.

Planning for an East Side stop dates back at least to the mid-1960s. The 63rd Street tunnel under the East River was completed in the mid-1970s, but by then the city’s fiscal crisis had interrupted expansion plans. The double-decker tunnel has an upper set of tracks for subway trains — the F train currently uses them. A lower set of tracks in the tunnel were intended for the Long Island Rail Road but have never been used.

Plans for a subway line on Second Avenue go back even further. The transportation authority plans to build the subway in stages, with the first section running from 96th Street to 63rd Street, where it will connect with the existing tracks for the N, R and W lines.

Gaining federal funding of this magnitude is a lengthy process, often accompanied at incremental stages by announcements by eager public officials. But in the case of the Long Island rail project, yesterday’s event, at which Ms. Peters and Gov. George E. Pataki (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/george_e_pataki/index.html?inline=nyt-per) signed a ceremonial letter of agreement, was the final approval.

Known as a full funding grant agreement, it reflects a commitment by the federal government to pay a specific amount, in installments, over the life of the project.

In contrast, the Second Avenue subway project is said to be some months short of such a binding commitment. In saying that her department had approved $693 million for the subway, Ms. Peters meant that she would ask Congress to appropriate that amount as a kind of down payment, so that work can begin.

Ultimately, the federal government expects to invest a total of $1.3 billion in the subway project. James S. Simpson, the administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, said his agency was confident that final approval for the full amount would come through.

The Long Island rail connector has a total budget of $6.3 billion. A majority of the $3.7 billion not supplied by the federal government will be raised through the sale of bonds by the authority and the state.

The Second Avenue project has an estimated cost of $3.8 billion. There, too, most of the $2.5 billion not covered by federal funds will be raised through borrowing.

Yesterday’s event drew a gaggle of politicians and transportation officials.

Peter S. Kalikow, the chairman of the transportation authority, called it “an event that started in 1968,” a reference to the early days of planning for the Long Island Rail Road connection.

[Fahzee]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/nyregion/19transit.html?ref=nyregion

Long Planned, Transit Projects Get U.S. Help


The Second Avenue project has an estimated cost of $3.8 billion. There, too, most of the $2.5 billion not covered by federal funds will be raised through borrowing.

that 3.8 Billion for only the stretch to 96th St, correct?

[Deimos]

yep.... $16+ Billion for the whole line.

[Eugenious]

yep.... $16+ Billion for the whole line.

You could build a whole new city in India or China for that kind of money, just incredible.

Some things that cost 16 billion;

- Annual NASA budget
- 10 year Russian Space Program funding
- Give everyone in NYC $2000 bucks
- Amount spend on worldwide internet advertising this year
- Amount spent in ALL of IRAQ since the start of Iraq occuptaion in the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) by US
- Australia's whole air defense budget for 100 new F35 Joint Strike Fighters to replace all its f18's and f111 bombers
-the amount Pfizer expects from operations in cash in 2006
- Harrahs Casino price
- Total amount Goldman Sachs is giving out in Bonuses in 2006
- Amount the whole organic food industry is worth in US
- The amount Russia spent on its military in 2005

[MrSpice]

You could build a whole new city in India or China for that kind of money, just incredible.

Some things that cost 16 billion;

- Annual NASA budget
- 10 year Russian Space Program funding
- Give everyone in NYC $2000 bucks
- Amount spend on worldwide internet advertising this year
- Amount spent in ALL of IRAQ since the start of Iraq occuptaion in the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) by US
- Australia's whole air defense budget for 100 new F35 Joint Strike Fighters to replace all its f18's and f111 bombers
-the amount Pfizer expects from operations in cash in 2006
- Harrahs Casino price
- Total amount Goldman Sachs is giving out in Bonuses in 2006
- Amount the whole organic food industry is worth in US
- The amount Russia spent on its military in 2005

One of the main reasons for such a steep cost is unionized work force, extensive legal/litigation fees and the cost of doing business here.

[TimmyG]

yep.... $16+ Billion for the whole line.
This will make the cost of the Big Dig look like a bargain. I think the cost will easily top $20 billion by the time it is complete. I still think it's needed, and it might be worth even this high price. I'm glad it's getting closer to being built.

[Fahzee]

I guess the property value on 2nd ave is pretty high also.

[MidtownGuy]

One of the main reasons for such a steep cost is unionized work force

Union bashing is so tired. :rolleyes:

[MikeW]

But not necessarily false. There are plenty of people in NYC who'd be be happy as a clam work for half what the union guys get paid. If they did the job non-union, they could probably save a couple of billion. But that wouldn't be politically correct now, would it?

Union bashing is so tired. :rolleyes:

[lofter1]

There are plenty of people in NYC who'd be be happy as a clam work for half what the union guys get paid. If they did the job non-union, they could probably save a couple of billion.

But non-union work probably means no health insurance -- and if the non-union workers are earning the amount that you speak of then who covers the medical costs?

If you're uninsured then, more likely than not, the public.

In the long run it isn't really responsible to put off those costs to taxpayers in the future.

[EtherealMist]

And you have to factor in the quality of work...

[lofter1]

Most of the McSam Hotel developments use non-union workers -- which might have something to do with what is reported in this article from the Downtown Express (http://downtownexpress.com/de_189/hotelsbullishnear.html):


One property that exemplifies both the promise and the pitfalls of the Downtown hotel boom is 130 Duane St., a 45-room boutique hotel at the corner of Church and Duane Sts. The site is owned by Hersha Hospitality, a firm that works with chains like Hilton and Marriott, and was developed by prolific hotelier Sam Chang, who has also been involved with 320 Pearl St., 6 York St. and six other Downtown sites. The Duane Street Hotel, on paper, is an ideal match for its location in trendy Tribeca, just north of the W.T.C. It will offer upscale, loft-like accommodations and cater to corporate travelers, charging an average rate of $350 per night.

However, the property has been under construction for six years and is not scheduled to open until the first week of March 2007 ...

[TonyO]

NY1

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

January 24, 2007

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

[kliq6]

this sounds promising, will make UES life better

[Eugenious]

this sounds promising, will make UES life better

LOL....

its going to be at least 10-15 yrs until you see the whole line completed if ever

[antinimby]

15 years is still to optimistic.

By the time the line gets all the way down to Hanover Square (if it even gets there), subways might be unnecessary as some other mode of transportation will probably be in use by then. :D

[ablarc]

Madrid Metro's president, Mr Manuel Melis, told IRJ in Madrid that construction had gone according to plan, though he admitted that the timescale could have been even shorter than originally planned. He said: "We completed everything on time and within budget In fact, we could have finished six months earlier because we were too conservative in our planning. Tunnel construction on the bored sections, using three boring machines, went faster than we expected. In retrospect, we could have saved time by using the same tunnelling method on the southern section, which was constructed using the cut-and-cover method."

Melis is a strong proponent of a cheap and efficient construction process, and he has put his philosophy into practice in Madrid, where the entire cost of the 1999-2003 metro development programme amounted to [euro]3.16 billion. These projects, incorporating Metrosur and the Line 10 extension, included planning, civil works, electrical and mechanical installations, interchanges, maintenance facilities, and rolling stock at an average cost of [euro]42 million/km.

Previous projects have been undertaken successfully on the same basis, as Melis explained last year in an article on project management (IRJ Rail Outlook 2002 p16). He said on that occasion: "I believe that rail transport projects are simple engineering projects, easy to design and build, and, with the appropriate staff and management techniques, they can easily be completed on time and within budget I refer particularly to those Madrid Metro projects where completion dates have not only been met, but have been beaten by several years in comparison with similar projects elsewhere."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQQ/is_5_43/ai_102286983/pg_1

[Fahzee]

NY POST
By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter


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.

[Eugenious]

NY POST
By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter


March 5, 2007 -
"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.

Every time they start talking like this I have a bad feeling in my stomach. Why can't they just shut up and start the job, how many times can you give these interviews and say the same thing? yes we know that this has been planning for 60 yrs and if you dont start work soon it'll be 70 yrs soon. Just shut up and dig the tunnel.


"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.

What a dumb #$$%, these people are such imbeciles I mean they are the ones who will benefit from this the most yet they are afraid of minor inconveniences! Unbelievable.

[mkeit]

A six-block long hole is not a " minor inconvenience". Tunnelling is very noisy and the shaft operations will go on 24 hours a day, at least 6 days a week.

[Eugenious]

A six-block long hole is not a " minor inconvenience". Tunnelling is very noisy and the shaft operations will go on 24 hours a day, at least 6 days a week.


So buy earplugs. Every neighborhood in Manhattan has noisy construction sites, it's something you have to deal with when living in a big city.

[Fahzee]

^^^ agreed. Afterall - this is Horizontal construction, not vertical

the actual drilling is only supposed to take a year - which means that there really wont be more than a month of actual drilling on any one block

And sure, people who live above or near the new subway entrances will experience a long construction period, but it my guess is that the noise and vibrations shouldn't be much of an issue once the actual drill passes by.

[nycla3]

Every time they start talking like this I have a bad feeling in my stomach. Why can't they just shut up and start the job, how many times can you give these interviews and say the same thing? yes we know that this has been planning for 60 yrs and if you dont start work soon it'll be 70 yrs soon. Just shut up and dig the tunnel.

Guess they're still hunting down the original attendees of the first groundbreaking to invite them to this one.:p

http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/subwaycommencement.html

Wonder if they'll play the Star Spangled Banner at the close....

[Dynamicdezzy]

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

[ZippyTheChimp]

March 24, 2007

A Museum-Quality Car for a Subway Yet Unbuilt

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/24/nyregion/24subway.xlarge1.jpg
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
The last of 10 prototype cars from 1949 for the Second Avenue subway. It was clad in stainless steel, had porthole windows, and cost $100,000.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Expectations are high for construction of the Second Avenue subway, and the futuristic new subway cars that will run on it. Made from gleaming stainless steel, the cars have a range of modern innovations: round porthole windows that would look at home on a rocket ship; high-tech air purification systems that use ultraviolet lamps to kill germs; illuminated route maps on the wall; and — incredible as it seems — public address systems that make clear, intelligible announcements.

Sound pretty good?

It did in 1949, too, when 10 prototype cars were delivered to the New York Board of Transportation. The board planned to run the cars on a new subway line it was just then preparing to build under Second Avenue.

Of course, the Second Avenue subway was never built, and no additional cars of the same futuristic design, known as the R11, were ever ordered.

The cars cost about $100,000 each, and together the 10 prototypes became known as the “million dollar train.” They were not built to be compatible with other cars, though, so they could not be added to most other trains. Without a line to belong to, they remained an oddity. Orphans, they kicked around the subway system, running on a few scattered lines (the Canarsie line, the Franklin Avenue shuttle) until they were retired in 1976.

Nine of the cars were scrapped.

But one of them, Car 8013, sits on display in the New York Transit Museum today in Downtown Brooklyn, an artifact of a future that never arrived.

Until now. Maybe.

This week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the eventual successor of the transportation board, signed a $337 million contract with a company that will, if expectations become reality, dig the tunnels from 96th Street to 63rd Street for the first leg of the long-awaited Second Avenue line.

“It’s a longstanding municipal dream,” said Charles Sachs, the senior curator of the Transit Museum. “It’s been planned for at least 75 years. It’s always been a heady idea for enhancing the public transportation network in Manhattan.”

Heady but unlucky.

Plans for the Second Avenue line, first prepared in the 1920s, were revived in the 1940s, when the R11 cars were built. In 1951, voters approved a measure allowing the city to borrow $500 million for rapid transit projects, which was primarily intended for construction of the new line.

Years of fiscal difficulties and political wrangling followed, but no tunnels were ever dug. “They had very high hopes,” Mr. Sachs said of the planners who ordered the R11 cars in the expectation that they would have a line to run on. The cars themselves seem to have reflected that same optimism.

“It was a radically new design for subway cars,” Mr. Sachs said.

When a scale model of the R11 was exhibited, an August 1948 article in The New York Times called it “New York’s subway car of tomorrow.”

With its sleek stainless steel shell, the R11 car was a stark departure from the painted and riveted steel cars that preceded it. It was not until some 15 years later, in the mid-1960s, that a full line of stainless steel cars came into use, Mr. Sachs said.

A description posted at the museum says that because polio was a concern in the 1940s, officials were looking for a way to curb the spread of germs in the subway. Earlier subway cars had conventional fans mounted on the ceiling. The designers of the R11 developed a forced air system that brought in air from the outside, ran it through “electrostatic dust filters” and under ultraviolet lamps intended to kill germs, before blowing it through ceiling vents into the cars.

Another newfangled feature: fluorescent lights. The description accompanying the car said, however, that the lights were considered less than reliable and were hard to replace when they burned out.

Today only the exterior of the car looks as it did when it was new. To make maintenance easier, the cars were gutted in 1964 and renovated and rebuilt inside, with parts that were standard to other cars.

A black and white photograph that Mr. Sachs retrieved from the museum archives shows one of the cars in the days before it was gutted. The advertisements along the top of the car are for Schlitz beer, Life cigarettes, and a 1949 movie starring Loretta Young called “Come to the Stable.” A poster invites riders to “meet Miss Subways, Elaine Levine.”

Signs in the car indicate it was running from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to Times Square. The rectangular windows on the sides of the car open with a crank. On the doors, above the porthole windows, is the admonition: “Please Keep Hands Off the Doors.” The seats are striped and upholstered in a faux wicker plastic.

On the outside, Car 8013 is almost as shiny as the day it arrived, a metallic symbol of its own bright promise.

But on the inside, the car conveys something more like dreary disappointment. The walls are two shades of a grayish, greenish blue. The fiberglass seats are hard and gray. The only sound is the buzz of the fluorescent tubes.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/24/nyregion/24subway.large3.jpg
The exterior of Car 8013 remains as gleaming and futuristic as ever, sitting in the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/24/nyregion/24subway.large2.jpg
A photograph of the R11 car before renovation, with faux wicker upholstery and ads for Life cigarettes and a Loretta Young movie.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

OMG ^^^ Cushioned Seats!!!

Highly unlikely that we'll ever see their likes again, but danged if that wouldn't be nice ...

[nycla3]

Went to the Transit Museum today for the first time and highly recommend it. Easy to get to and very well presented and organized. The subway cars are fabulous.

http://www.mta.info/mta/museum/

[Ed007Toronto]

Love the fact that its in an abandoned subway station.

[spatulashack]

NY1:

Second Avenue Subway Groundbreaking Set For April 12th
March 28, 2007

It has been talked about for decades, and now – for the first time since the 1970s – actual digging is set to begin on the Second Avenue subway. NY1’s Bobby Cuza filed the following report.

"The reality is the Second Avenue subway is about to begin," said MTA Executive Director Elliot “Lee” Sander.

You could be forgiven for being skeptical of that claim. After all, work on the Second Avenue Subway has started twice before. Now, the date's been set for the third and hopefully final groundbreaking ceremony on the project early next month.

"We will be doing it in the Second Avenue subway tunnel; that part of it that has been constructed,” said Sander. “It is in pristine condition."

At Wednesday's MTA board meeting, Sander announced that the groundbreaking will take place April 12, just two weeks from now.

Then work will begin along Second Avenue from 96th Street down to 92nd Street. Utilities will have to be relocated. Two lanes of traffic will be lost, and a playground on the corner of 96th and 2nd will be closed, to be used as a staging area.

Eventually crews will lower into the ground an enormous piece of machinery known as a tunnel boring machine, which will then start slowly drilling its way south, deep below Second Avenue.

And while the MTA will have to tear down five buildings and use parts of many others for station entrances, vent facilities and other infrastructure, officials say the drilling itself will be almost imperceptible above ground.

"The environmental impacts on the residents of Second Avenue will be kept to a minimum," said Sander.

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. That portion, costing $3.9 billion, is expected to open in 2013.

- Bobby Cuza

I can't believe the lack of posts in this thread lately. We talked about it for years and years when we didn't think it would get built and now that it is confirmed and shovels are practically in the ground, there is silence. What gives? This is the biggest engineering project for New York in decades.

[MikeW]

You'll soon start seeing lots of posts from people bitching about the construction. I'll probably be one of them.

[Eugenious]

NY1:
I can't believe the lack of posts in this thread lately. We talked about it for years and years when we didn't think it would get built and now that it is confirmed and shovels are practically in the ground, there is silence. What gives? This is the biggest engineering project for New York in decades.

Boby Cuza can shove it, that schmuck...

Why don't you take some pictures of the digging and the area? maybe then we'll have something to talk about...

[clubBR]

2nd Ave. Subway Platforms May Get Glass Walls and Sliding Doors
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/05/nyregion/05doors-600.jpg Librado Romero/The New York Times

Transit officials are considering a system for the subway line employing a double set of sliding doors, much like those on the AirTrain at Kennedy Airport.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=WILLIAM%20NEUMAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=WILLIAM%20NEUMAN&inline=nyt-per)
Published: April 5, 2007

The Second Avenue subway, as it is envisioned by planners at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will have many modern features that set it apart, including roomier, brightly lighted stations with wider platforms that are cooled in the summertime and are fully accessible to the handicapped.

But as the authority prepares for a groundbreaking ceremony next week, planners are considering one innovation that would make the Second Avenue subway radically different from every other line in the city: mechanical doors on the edge of the platforms that would open to allow passengers to move on and off the trains.

The doors, set into a wall of glass or metal, would create a floor-to-ceiling barrier, sealing off the track and tunnel area from the platforms and altering forever the daily experience of waiting passengers. Gone would be the rush of air and thunder, gone the visceral thrill as many tons of steel hurtle by at high speed, just inches away, all replaced by the hygienic interface of technology.

Several subway systems in Europe and Asia use the doors, known as platform edge doors or platform screen doors.

They are also used in this country in many airport shuttle train systems, including the AirTrain at Kennedy International Airport.

Ernest Tollerson, the transportation authority’s policy director, said Tuesday that the authority was studying the feasibility of incorporating the platform edge doors into designs for the Second Avenue subway.

The doors, he said, could allow substantial energy savings in the station cooling systems, which would use cold water to chill air blown into the stations and reduce temperatures by about 10 degrees. With open platforms, the hot air from the tunnels would mix with the cooled air in the stations. With doors on the platform edge, the heat from the tunnels would be at least partly blocked and the cooling system could operate more efficiently.

“They have a lot of advantages in B.T.U. savings and things like that,” Mr. Tollerson said. “They improve the station environment. It’s a design element worth looking at.”

He described the initiative as part of a larger effort to consider the environmental impact of the authority’s operations.

“There is an interest in thinking about and figuring out — if we’re going to live in a carbon-constrained world and we’re going to think about the ecological footprint of a global city and a global region — where does the M.T.A. fit in all that and what should the M.T.A. be thinking about and doing,” Mr. Tollerson said.

Engineers working on the new line’s design had previously considered the platform doors, but the concept was rejected because of concerns about its cost and the way it would affect subway operations. It was opposed by Lawrence G. Reuter, who was president of New York City Transit (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_city_transit/index.html?inline=nyt-org) from 1996 until February 2007.

Last month, however, planners at the authority asked the engineering firms that have been designing the subway line to take another look at incorporating platform doors.

Mr. Tollerson said the review was not related to Mr. Reuter’s departure. He said the idea came out of discussions he had with Mysore L. Nagaraja, the authority’s president of capital construction.

Mr. Nagaraja said that besides the potential energy savings, there were safety benefits as well.

With the door system in place, people could not fall or jump in front of trains. He also said the doors could reduce track fires, because people could not throw trash onto the tracks.

The doors would be likely to add to the cost of building the new subway line, which has a budget of $3.8 billion. Mr. Nagaraja said engineers would estimate those costs, and the degree to which they would be offset by savings in cooling expenses.

Mr. Nagaraja said that in earlier discussions of the platform edge doors, transit officials had expressed concerns about long-term maintenance requirements.

One concern is that most if not all train systems that use platform edge doors also incorporate a system of computerized train operation in which trains stop at exactly the same spot every time, and are always lined up properly with the platform doors. The authority has been working to develop a computerized system for New York subways, but it is still a long-term goal. With the current system, the doors would have to be designed to operate with trains controlled by human drivers.

The first phase of the new subway line is to include four stations, from 96th Street to 63rd Street, and is scheduled to be finished in 2013.

Mr. Reuter, the former transit agency president, said that in the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the possibility of retrofitting the entire subway system with platform edge doors was discussed at the authority. Both times, he said, the idea was discarded, largely because of difficulties in integrating the doors with the existing system. When the idea arose again in planning for the Second Avenue subway, Mr. Reuter said, he opposed it.

“I definitely discouraged it because it’s a cost item and it’s a maintenance item,” said Mr. Reuter, who now works in Miami as a senior vice president of Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering firm. “It’s only going to apply in a few stations. What good is it going to do if you can’t adapt it to the rest of the system? I didn’t see any benefit, plus it’s going to cost extra money to maintain them.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[Ninjahedge]

Great idea$......

[MikeW]

... until they start breaking, they don't get around to fixing then so quickly, and everyone is piling throught the three on the entire platform that actually work. Maybe they shouldn't be creating maintenance nightmares.

[ZippyTheChimp]

April 9, 2007

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

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

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.”

Timeline

1920s: Mayor John F. Hylan and other city officials call for a new subway line on the East Side of Manhattan.

August, 1929: The city prepares plans for a Second Avenue subway line extending the length of the East Side and into the Bronx.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20070408_SUBWAY_DOCS/19290916_subway_doc.pdf

1930s: Amid the Great Depression, the project is shelved because of financial constraints.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20070408_SUBWAY_DOCS/19350515_subway_doc.pdf

1949: With plans revived, the city receives its order of 10 stainless steel subway cars, which cost $100,000 each. The New York Times describes the prototype as "the car of tomorrow."

Sept, 1951: The Board of Estimate approves a $500 million spending plan for construction of the Second Avenue subway line.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20070408_SUBWAY_DOCS/19510914_subway_doc.pdf

Sept, 1952: "Staggering" city debt causes plans to be postponed, first for three months, then indefinitely by 1953.

March, 1957: The $500 million pledged for the Second Avenue subway is spent on general system upkeep. The new line remains unbuilt.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20070408_SUBWAY_DOCS/19570309_subway_doc.pdf

1968: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority takes over the city's subway system and begins moving ahead with plans for the Second Avenue line.

October, 1972: Wielding a pickax, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller leads a groundbreaking ceremony with Mayor John V. Lindsay, and work begins on the first part of the line, from 99th Street to 105th Street.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20070408_SUBWAY_DOCS/19721028_subway_doc.pdf

March, 1973: Construction begins from 110th Street to 120th Street.

October, 1973: Mayor Lindsay breaks ground for the line's downtown section.

July, 1974: Mayor Abraham D. Beame breaks ground for a fourth segment on the Lower East Side

November, 1974: Pinched for funds, the M.T.A. announces that completion would be delayed until 1986.

December, 1974: Mayor Beame calls for the tunnel segments to be sealed once work is completed.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20070408_SUBWAY_DOCS/19741214_subway_doc.pdf

September, 1975: Mayor Beame halts work on the fourth tunnel before it gets past the preliminary stage.

April, 2007: The M.T.A. is set to break ground for an initial phase, from 63rd Street to 96th Street.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[antinimby]

Railroaded from their homes?


BY TAMER EL-GHOBASHY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, April 8th 2007 (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/04/08/2007-04-08_railroaded_from_their_homes-3.html), 12:56 PM

The walk from Giorgio Costa's upper East Side apartment to the nearest subway is unpleasant at best - and things don't improve when the 61-year-old boards the overcrowded trains on the Lexington Ave. line.

When the first segment of the Second Ave. subway finally opens in 2013, Costa's walk will be eliminated - but not because the new subway will stop near his home. Costa's building must be demolished to make way for the East Side line.


http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/04/08/amd_giorgiocosta.jpg
Giorgio Costa is among nearly 400 people
whose homes will be demolished to make
room for the new subway.


Costa is among nearly 400 people whose homes will be razed to make room for the new subway.

The first to be rousted will be the occupants of 60 apartments in four buildings slated to be taken over by the MTA early next year.

"I'm sick," said Costa, a retired waiter and cook who moved into the tidy studio apartment when he arrived in the city from Italy in 1972. "After all these years, they're gonna kick me out? This is my home. This is it."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority informed Costa and his neighbors of the plan in 2004. They were greatly concerned but the panic was tempered by the knowledge that politicians and transit types had been promising to create the new subway line for decades without success.

The reality has finally sunk in.

Costa pays $605 a month in rent - far below the market rate in the neighborhood, where an influx of young professionals has driven rents beyond what most retirees can afford.

MTA officials said Costa's five-story building on the corner of E. 69th St. and Second Ave. must be demolished to make room for station exits and equipment.

Thirty buildings will be knocked down for the $17 billion project, the MTA said.


http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/04/08/click_secmap.gif


Transit officials pledged to follow federal law, which requires them to find displaced tenants new homes of similar quality and provide subsidies of $5,250 over 42 months.

"I can't afford to pay $2,000 rent," Costa said. "Hopefully they can come up with something. They have the money, right?"

The MTA board acknowledged the difficulty of finding comparable homes with similar rent last week and approved a plan to start leasing rent-stabilized apartments in the area to hold for the displaced tenants.

But real estate experts doubt the plan will work, noting that owners often bring the value of vacated rent-stabilized apartments up to market value by making minor renovations.

"It may be disingenuous for the MTA to say we're going to find apartments for comparable rents unless they're able to pull some strings with friendly landlords," said Dennis Feldman, a vice president with the Corcoran Group.

Restaurant manager Christopher Choquet, 34, thinks the MTA's plan is a long shot and plans to move from his doomed building to Brooklyn.

He figures it's the only way he can maintain having a reasonable $1,200 monthly rent. Choquet's concern was for his older neighbors. "You can't just displace somebody without doing something for them," he said.

© Copyright 2007 NYDailyNews.com

[antinimby]

Razing those buildings will yield a pretty large open area at those corners (E. 69 St. and E. 72 St)--much larger than necessary to accomodate a subway station entrance, I would think.

I've seen plenty of other subway entrances next to small walkups (some are even incorporated within a building) and they didn't need to raze them back then when they were first built.

So why is it necessary now and will those open areas at some point in the future be allowed to host new development?

[pianoman11686]

Not sure, but I'd guess part of the explanation lies in trying to make all these new stations wheelchair accessible...

[ramvid01]

Air ventilation buildings is my guess.

[Ed007Toronto]

So did they groundbreak today?

[clubBR]

They broke the ground yet again today

[ablarc]

Not sure, but I'd guess part of the explanation lies in trying to make all these new stations wheelchair accessible...
Most, not part.

[CMANDALA]

Village Voice cartoon

[antinimby]

First Look: Second Avenue Subway Stations


http://nymag.com/daily/intel/20070412mta_lg.jpg
Image: MTA Capital Construction

4/12/2007 (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/04/first_look_second_avenue_subwa.html)

We reported earlier on today's groundbreaking for the Second Avenue Subway, and we told you that "stations on the line will have natural light and column-free corridors (and, according to renderings, odd shards of Daniel Libeskind–esque glass)." Here now, renderings of those stations. Libeskinn-esque, indeed. —Alec Appelbaum

Copyright © 2007, New York Magazine Holdings LLC

[antinimby]

As usual in this no innovation, design-challenged city, we get dorky looking stations that will age badly.

[Deimos]

Ok, so where on 2nd avenue is there enough space to have the station portrayed in the top left picture?

[macreator]

I think they look awful -- I agree that they will not age well. I'd prefer more traditional looking, classy and simple glass canopies. The skylights to the station are quite nice though.

[ManhattanKnight]

Most, not part.

Actually, in the station renderings shown in post #324, it's the escalators, not the elevator included for wc access, that take up most of the space at the sidewalk level.

[clubBR]

What are the boundaries of the 2nd Ave track (from north to south)?

[Stern]

I think these stations look great, edgy and innovative. Light and modern. I don't know what the problem is, they certainly don't look cheap either.

[ZippyTheChimp]

It was detailed in the project documents.

Three basic design types were considered:
Within existing buildings
In plazas
Sidewalk

Since all stations will have escalators and elevators, the typical sidewalk model was rejected as too small. There was mention of the possibility of sidewalk bumpouts into parking lanes to increase space, but for the most part, type 1 and 2 will be used.

[Fahzee]

Ok, so where on 2nd avenue is there enough space to have the station portrayed in the top left picture?


Duh - in the giant piazza by 86th street - haven't you ever seen it?:)

[NIMBYkiller]

Ugh, more glass egs

[Fahzee]

From NY1

April 23, 2007

Drivers on the Upper East Side can expect major headaches as construction begins on the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway.

Crews are set to start excavating sections of Second Avenue between 91st and 96th Street today, and concrete barriers and fences are set to be installed tomorrow.

Drivers can expect major traffic disruptions and parking restrictions in the area for the next 18 months.

Beginning tomorrow, two left lanes will be closed from 93rd to 98th Streets. There will also be no stopping or standing from 91st to 98th Street.

The first section of the 2nd Avenue subway will run from 63rd Street to 96th Street and will serve as an extension of the Q train.

The first phase will cost about $3.9 billion and is expected to be finished by 2013.

[MikeW]

My garage is on 94th and 2nd. This is going to be fun.

[Ed007Toronto]

So it begins...

http://www.mta.info/capconstr/sas/index.html

Construction of the Second Avenue Subway is underway!

The first construction contract involves the construction of new tunnels between 92nd and 63rd Streets, the excavation of the launch box for the tunnel boring (TBM) machine at just south of 92nd to 95th Streets, and access shafts at 69th and 72nd Streets. These shafts will be excavated toward the end of contract One and be used for the subsequent construction of the 72nd Street station. Contract One is expected take 40 months to complete.

Traffic Advisory:
Traffic lanes in the vicinity of 2nd Avenue and 96th Street are closed to prepare the site for the start of construction
West Side of Second Avenue: No Standing 7AM – 10AM & 4PM – 7PM Loading & Unloading 10AM – 4AM Monday – Friday
East Side of Second Avenue: No Standing Any Time

[ZippyTheChimp]

May 13, 2007

Caught in the Headlights

The residents of one building standing in the way of the Second Avenue subway are ambivalent about being uprooted to make way for the long-awaited project.

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.

By GREGORY BEYER

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.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[luciedove]

Friday, June 08, 2007

Adrian Benepe
Commissioner
City of New York
Parks and Recreation

Dear Commissioner Benepe:

The New York Bird Club sent out an invitation to a meeting at NY Blood Center, 310 E. 67th St , Thursday, June 7, to protest tree removal by the Department of Parks in order to allegedly facilitate construction of the 2nd Ave Subway. The Bird Club complained:
"Due to the construction of the 2nd Ave subway, there already have been removed at least 40 trees along 2nd Ave. The next place to remove trees is by the park at 2nd Ave between 91-90th Streets. There are magnificent very large and lush sycamore and other trees on this block, perhaps that have been there for 100 years or so. They are marked to be removed sometime in the very near future. These trees are homes to squirrels and birds who already do not have enough greenery to survive, and the trees also provide beauty, shade and clean-air for people.

"Please tell everyone to come and support these trees who are alive and do not wish to be chopped down."

There was a representative from the Parks Department at the meeting answering questions. I asked him if in view of the fact that the 2nd Ave Subway is far from fully funded, could not tree removal be halted until funding for construction is assured. Before he could reply, in fact before I was finished, a lady whose name I do not know intervened to say my question was irrelevant and that the 2nd Ave Subway was fully funded.
I understand that the lady was connected with Community Board 8. This is a body that does not hold me in the highest regard because beginning in the 70s, as a columnist for a local newspaper Our Town and political candidate I have often been less then complementary of the Community Boards. I wrote, for example, that their budgets increased 3000% during the fiscal crisis of the 70s and 80s. I am also known as an advocate of light rail in preference to subways, which is a no-no at Community Board 8 and also the Republican and Democratic political clubs on the Eastside.

I did not bring evidence to the meeting to back up my contention about the lack of funding, and the gentleman from the Parks Department did not intervene in the back-and-forth sharp exchange between me and not only the lady who had initiated the dispute but also what appeared to be two or three others from the Community Board. Therefore, I am submitting my evidence to you now. It is a direct quote from PlaNYC:
"We may have broken the ground for the Second Avenue Subway-but there is still a significant funding gap for the first of four phases. While the entire project is designed to travel from Harlem to Lower Manhattan, we are still nearly a billion dollars short of the funds needed to build just from 96th Street to 63rd Street.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/downloads/pdf/report_transportation (http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/downloads/pdf/report_transportation.pdf).pdf (http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/downloads/pdf/report_transportation.pdf)
I would like to add that there is a growing wariness among legislators and civic activists in the outer boroughs regarding the 2nd Ave Subway. They have begun to realize that Eastside Republicans and Democrats are seeking to corral virtually all available transportation funding from city, state and federal sources. In light of the fact that Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island elected officials and their constituents have serious transportation needs of their own and face severe protests from outer borough commuters who may wonder why they must pay subway and bus fares up to $3 per ride to help fund a project that will not provide relief for the crowded Lexington Avenue until 2014. Under these circumstances, it is questionable that sufficient non-Manhattan representatives will vote in Congress, the State Legislature and City Council to provide necessary funding for the 2nd Ave Subway.

I am aware that there is considerable discomfort on the Lexington Avenue subway. In the mayoral election of 2001 (where I was a candidate), I heard City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who was also running, propose as a solution constructing Metro-North stations on the Eastside. Peter Vallone's idea was meritorious. To avoid residential dislocation, Metro North stations could be placed in the center of Park Avenue at 96, 86, 77th and 59th St , similar to those on the Westside on Broadway at 116th St and 72nd St . This would, however, draw considerable protest from The Lexington Democratic Club and the Metropolitan Republicans Club as many of their contributors live on Park Avenue and might be reluctant to experience even minimal inconvenience.

However, opening up 10 Metro-North stations in the Bronx to Metro Card users (a 50% fare saving) and scheduling train stops at Bronx stations every four or five minutes instead of the current 18 minutes would divert a substantial amount of commuters with consequent considerable relaxation of pressure on the overcrowded Lexington Avenue line. Street level boarding, nonpolluting state of art Light rail on 2nd Ave would also be welcomed by Eastside riders and residents because it would involve, unlike the 2nd Ave Subway, negligible destruction of affordable housing or loss of jobs in restaurants and stores along 2nd Ave. (See appended New York Sun blog).

I believe the case is overwhelming for the Department of Parks to cease destroying trees along 2nd Ave at least until there is assurance that the 2nd Ave Subway is fully funded. Even then I hope the Department will find ways to prevent or at least minimize further loss of valuable trees, which are not only a refuge for birds and squirrels but also help improve the environment. Even the MTA grudgingly admits 2nd Ave Subway construction poses a threat to regional air quality (see below).

Respectfully yours,
George N. Spitz
www.georgespitz.com (http://www.georgespitz.com/)

PlaNYC Should Not Prefer 6 miles of Subway to 60 miles of Light Rail Without Further StudyReader comment on: The Planner Behind Bloomberg's PlaNYC (http://www.nysun.com/article/55342)

Submitted by George N. Spitz, May 29, 2007 05:10
Rohit Aggarwala, the technocrat who crafted Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC, allegedly "shares a passion for high-speed trains." But there is apparently no place in PlaNYC for state of art street level boarding nonpolluting "high speed" light rail, the generally accepted 21st-century solution for municipal transportation problems. Instead, New York City is spending virtually all available transit funding on the 2nd Ave Subway. Even the MTA grudgingly admits that
"Because of the large scale and extended duration of the construction required for the Second Avenue Subway, the construction could potentially increase regional concentrations of ozone precursors-NOx and VOCs-as well as fine particulate matter (PM2.5), all of which are pollutants of concern on a regional basis."

Furthermore, for 6 miles of 2nd Ave Subway building costs, 60 miles light rail could be constructed, consequently, solving not only Manhattan commuting needs but also those of Staten Island, Eastern Queens, Central and South Brooklyn and Northeast Bronx, all areas greatly needing improved transportation. Mr.Aggarwala should be aware that Barcelona, Toronto, Munich, Lisbon, Vancouver plus Salt Lake City , Portland and Denver in the United States, are choosing light rail in preference to subways and buses. He should persuade Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff to withdraw environmental permits for the 2nd Avenue Subway until a fair and open study can be initiated perhaps in collaboration with Queens Councilman John Liu, Chairman of the City Council Transportation Committee on whether New York City should spend virtually all available transit funds on a subway project utilizing pre-1950 technology that will serve only one portion of Manhattan rather than on a modern light rail system that will benefit all New Yorkers.

GEORGE N SPITZ,

www.georgespitz.com (http://www.georgespitz.com/),





source: http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/luciedove/vpost?id=1937024 (http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/luciedove/vpost?id=1937024)

[Eugenious]

Goddamn nimby's, THEY WILL REPLANT THE DAMN TREES WHEN THE SUBWAY IS FINISHED RELAX

People in this city are messed up in the head I swear...

[Punzie]

luciedove (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/member.php?u=8661) is a new member and may not be used to taking a thrashing on message boards. Go easier on him -- at first, anyway.

[macreator]

This Spitz man does have a point about funding. I'll believe the Second Avenue subway will be built when the cars are on the tracks.

[clubBR]

Goddamn nimby's, THEY WILL REPLANT THE DAMN TREES WHEN THE SUBWAY IS FINISHED RELAX

People in this city are messed up in the head I swear...

Lol we have similar mindstates

[Punzie]

Goddamn nimby's...
You're pre-judging. He may be one, he may not be:

If he doesn't want the 100-year-old tree cut down because they are in his backyard, but he doesn't mind if others further away from him are cut down, then he's a nimby.

But if he doesn't want any more of them cut down, no matter how far they are from his dwelling, then he's not a nimby. He's just a man who loves trees. (And the wildlife around them.)

THEY WILL REPLANT THE DAMN TREES WHEN THE SUBWAY IS FINISHED RELAX
Here you have a point. Except that they won't be replanting the large, gracious 100-year-old trees; they'll be planting fledglings.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The letter from George Spitz to the Parks Commissioner contains a door-opener (for anyone else reading it) - the removal of trees on 2nd Ave at 90th and 91st. The main topic of the letter, however, seems to be a challenge of the SAS vis-a-vis light rail.

I'm not going there.

As for the tree removal, it's reasonable that they should be removed at a time that is as close to actual construction as practicable. It should be something that can be worked out among the MTA, Parks Dept, and CB.

90th-91st is within the Phase One zone, but there is no specific information on that segment:

MTA webpageConstruction Contract One will include the construction of the tunnels between 92nd and 63rd Streets, for the construction of the launch box for the tunnel boring machine (TBM) at 92nd to 95th Streets, and construction of access shafts at 69th and 72nd Streets. It is expected that the first surface work for Contract One will take place in the first quarter of 2007 in the vicinity of the launch box, 91st to 95th Street. Contract One is expected to be 40 months in duration.

The NY Bird Club forum provides no information as to whether these trees need to be removed at all, just rather impassioned posts that they should not be, citing environmental and property value benefits. That's true, but it must be weighed against the environmental and property value benefits of the SAS.

Tree removal is painful, since it takes so long before they are replaced. The Holland Tunnel rotary was finally re-landscaped, and the DEP came along and removed a block of decades-old trees to construct a riser for the water tunnel.

Whataya gonna do?

[Eugenious]

ok I get the point, the trees are a big part of the landscape. But when the property owners cut down hundreds of trees all over the city there is no outcry. So I say to the tree hugger, how about you talk about the whole city and support the laws for punishment of people who remove tree's for no reason. How about you support the neighborhoods that are not as fortunate as your's to have kept the trees untouched for so long, how about you look at some portions of the city with ZERO trees that don't have any reason not to have them besides city oversight.

If you're really a bird/tree hugger/lover you need to look whats going on in the city as a whole not just your block.

[Ed007Toronto]

Except that they won't be replanting the large, gracious 100-year-old trees; they'll be planting fledglings.

How long will 100-year-old trees survive on their own? And a completed subway will bring a lot more environmental and financial benefits than a few trees.

[TonyO]

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.

[jersey_guy]

http://bp1.blogger.com/_tXHSxzTHLHg/RpE3DFDOz2I/AAAAAAAAACA/VO4vCm1q7bk/s1600-h/IMG_7717.JPGSAS is in existence already, at least in an Absolut world!!!

http://yorkvillenyc.blogspot.com/2007/07/ad-on-this-bus-stop-caught-our-eye.html

http://bp2.blogger.com/_tXHSxzTHLHg/RpE4ZVDOz4I/AAAAAAAAACQ/KoYoYu687vc/s1600-h/IMG_7719.JPG
http://bp2.blogger.com/_tXHSxzTHLHg/RpE4ZVDOz4I/AAAAAAAAACQ/KoYoYu687vc/s1600-h/IMG_7719.JPG
http://bp2.blogger.com/_tXHSxzTHLHg/RpE4ZVDOz4I/AAAAAAAAACQ/KoYoYu687vc/s1600-h/IMG_7719.JPG

[lofter1]

RED XXXXX ^^^ :mad:

[jersey_guy]

Sorry, I simply added the photos from the article I linked, but I guess it won't let you link images directly. Funny thing is, when I go to edit the post, those image links do not appear in the edit post field, so I can't even delete them!

[TonyO]

NY Sun

Second Avenue Subway Could Prove To Be Track to Profits

BY ELIOT BROWN - Special to the Sun
July 12, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/58290

Property owners on the East Side could reap huge profits in coming years, with the large-scale public investment in the long-awaited Second Avenue subway expected to lead to a corresponding spike in real estate prices.

Although years away, when the completion of the "T-line" is eventually realized, real estate experts say, the added transit would add momentum to an already-transforming East Side.

With the large-scale development being planned at the former Con Ed site between 34th and 41st streets, a United Nations that is attempting to expand, a rezoning slated for 125th Street, and a planned esplanade for the East River waterfront, supporters of the subway line say it will boost the area's momentum and open up new opportunities for residents who for decades have clamored for a second subway line.

The Second Avenue line has been on the drawing board since at least the 1920s, as planners have long eyed an eastern sibling for the perennially crowded Lexington Avenue line. Political and economic constraints — particularly the extraordinary cost of tunneling under the well-developed East Side — have repeatedly put a halt to any progress, and the line's groundbreaking in April was at least the fourth since the 1970s. The cost could exceed $15 billion for the entire line, which would run between the financial district and 125th Street, though funding has been secured only for the first $4 billion segment.

Advocates of the line have touted the potential economic benefits of the investment, which would produce rewards by decreasing commute times throughout the East Side and spurring greater real estate prices and new development.

High land values, especially in subway-dependent Manhattan, traditionally follow the path of mass transit, with seniors, young children, and Wall Street commuters all benefiting from the increased ease of access.

For now, real estate experts caution that a big bump in prices along the project's footprint is still years off, a result of the distant completion date — the final phase of construction is slated to end in 2023 — and the lack of a committed funding source for much of the line.

On the Upper East Side, where the first section of the line is scheduled for completion in 2013, brokers say the prospect of years of constant construction is driving some buyers away.

"People are wary because of its inconvenience, and people are always wary about an unknown," an Upper East Side broker for the Corcoran Group, Wendy Sarasohn, said.

Still, others are lured by the long-term investment value, Ms. Sarasohn said, leaving prices relatively unchanged in comparison to nearby neighborhoods.

"I can't say that I've seen a pattern or a surge, or any change in pricing," a partner at the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, Jonathan Miller, said.

"In some respects, it might provide a drag on price growth in the short term — and that would be recouped and likely accelerated" upon completion, Mr. Miller said.

High property values on the Upper East Side have long been concentrated toward Central Park, as land prices gradually decline with movement eastward. Upon completion of the subway line, developers and brokers say the prices along First and Second avenues could come closer to narrowing the gap with the high-end havens of Park and Fifth avenues.

"It's always been known that First Avenue and Second have always been at a great discount," in large part because of the distance from a subway, the developer of a nearly completed condominium tower on East End Avenue and 88th Street, Orin Wilf, said.

With the first phase of the subway still years off, Mr. Wilf said landlords and investors see a long-term opportunity, one for which buyers of individual condos do not have the patience.

"As an investor of properties, it's a good time to buy right now on First and Second avenues for 10 to 15 years down the road," he said.

A 2003 study by the Regional Plan Association found that the line would open up opportunities for new development throughout the project's footprint. The report cited the possibility to expand a health services corridor on the Upper East Side, and open up the relatively underdeveloped East Harlem area to new investment.

"That's an area that is softer and has been bypassed by developers for a long time," an author of the report who is a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, Jeffrey Zupan, said. By connecting into the growing 125th Street corridor, which includes a Metro North station, the project will open the upper sections of the line to large levels of new development, Mr. Zupan said.

The section of the line that carries one of the project's greatest benefits — a far East Side connection to the financial d