Suprise! More on this later, of course, but this completely validates what a few commenters have been saying on this site for a while now. [New York 1]
SAS over budget, two years behind schedule
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Suprise! More on this later, of course, but this completely validates what a few commenters have been saying on this site for a while now. [New York 1]
14 comments
One thing of note in the MTA capital budget plan is CBTC on the Queens Blvd line. This will certainly be interesting to see since it’s never been tried on tracks with multiple routes running over them. This should be a topic of future investigation.
Never been tried in New York, or never been tried?
Of course it is over budget and behind schedule. All a reporter would have to do is walk over to 2nd Avenue and look, just look, at the project. The subway is being built by 25 guys at most. Most of the time guys stand and talk, or walk and talk, or eat and talk. Also, it is only a matter of time before someone is killed on Second Avenue because of the recklessly hazardous conditions that the MTA has created. And when the MTA is sued in a wrongful death suit, the project will really be over budget. Why didn’t the MTA just start running more trains at rush hour on the Lex line? Sorry, but the truth is, that except at rush hour, the 4, 5, and 6 are not overcrowded. But somebody is getting rich or got rich on this stubway. I don’t know who is benefiting, but as ever, good journalism follows the money. Can we at least stop the nonsense that a complete Second Avenue Subway will ever be built? Because it won’t be.
Peter Knox, you are 100% incorrect. I ride the 6 Train nearly everyday. Not just Monday-Friday during rush hour, but also most Saturdays and Sundays to go north/south in NYC. It is crowded all day on the weekends… it’s been packed at 10am and at 8pm on Saturdays, and there are Sunday crowds, too. Now, perhaps more weekend trains could be added, but as far as weekday rush hour goes, there is clearly no way that the MTA could squeeze in more trains on the 4/5 or 6 lines. Sometimes trains arrive less than 60 seconds apart… typically I wait around 3 minutes for a train during rush hour and during those 3 minutes you can see the platform becoming quite crowded. Not only will the Second Avenue Subway ease congestion on the 4/5/6, but Phases II and III will provide localized subway access to much of the downtown area that currently has nothing close by (alphabet city/east village). If you can’t see why this subway line is important to transportation in NYC, you should really take a closer look.
Shorter Peter Knox:
You kids get off my lawn!
Can we at least stop the nonsense that a complete Second Avenue Subway will ever be built? Because it won’t be.
Every project in history had at least one skeptic. If you go around in life predicting that nothing will be built, naturally you will be correct sometimes, but it doesn’t mean you had any actual insight into the situation.
No wonder transit is New York City is so bad. Now, it’ll take 7 years to finish 1 portion of a subway line that New Yorker have been asking for more than 75 years, all because everyone and their brother is dipping their hands into the cookie jar. The Lexington subway is already crowed everyday of the week and now commuters up and down the line have to wait 7 year to get a “Q” line extension up and running.
This is ridiculous and stupid.
For those of you who are not suffering the inconvenience, the filth, the dirty air and the horrible, head-splitting construction noise from 7am to 10 pm and later, please know that Peter Knox is telling the truth about the work site conditions. There should be supervisors on site as well as surprise visits by supervisors and politicians. The biggest surprise and laugh around here is that each work shift seems to break ground at the beginning of their shift, fill it in at the end of the shift or end of day with either dirt, asphalt or cement, and the next shift or the next day, the first hour of the shift spends it reopening the “cut”. There is so much NYC money going to waste while these workers who mostly seem to live outside the city or state are making very substantial pay! Quality of life has disappeared in this neighborhood! Tell us again about that 15 minute crowded subway ride! Wait till this construction moves closer to your corner!
I could say the same about my workplace. The building overlooks the east side of Broadway between 117th and 118th. Around 119th there’s intensive construction, so the street narrows from three and a half lanes to two or one. So I have to deal with the noise of both the construction and the cars that honk in the jams.
And I don’t even get two additional subway tracks for the inconvenience.
Peter Knox, Susan, etc., know what they are talking about, from personal experience. Of course the Second Avenue line is important, but so are additonal lines if 9 million or so are expected to live in the Five Boroughs. Experience shows, unfortunately, that things drag out or become too expensive or can’t be funded and thus never happen, time and time again. And judging from Susan’s and others’ comments, it seems the work site itself is not managed properly or safely. At taxpayer expense!
Of course people are skeptical!
I live on Second Avenue between 91st and 92nd. The digging is right outside my front door. It’s true that on most days and nights (the project hours are 7am-10pm) essentially a skeleton crew is at work. For the last year, 25 guys or fewer are moving pieces around on a project that spans a quarter mile from 96th to 91st. They barely exert themselves, and on some days only a couple of guys are visible on the site. There have been some exceptional days, like when Congresswoman Maloney visited, then dozens, maybe 200 workers appeared, the whole expanse was filled with busy bees building the subway of the future until the next day when the crew shrunk again to the usual 25 or maybe even fewer. The work itself fascinates neighbors brought together by the machine in our front yard. We’ve seen the same holes dug, then filled with concrete, then dug again, then filled with concrete and dug again. From a taxpayer’s, or an engineering, or a sociological point of view, it fascinates. No doubt they are progressing, since every shovelful of dirt advances the project towards the ultimate goal, and one day, if given unlimited time and money, the subway could be completed by these very people.
I’m close to Ben , in the magical land called the “TBM Launch Box” – sounds like a shiny space-station type place doesn’t it? That’s exactly right, come on over to 93rd and 2nd to take a look. We should sell tickets for people to come visit perhaps.
I was woken again tonight by a truck racing its engine for 30 minutes in support of some “utility” activity or other. My children toss and turn in bed – clearly unable to get the rest that they need. I am helpless, powerless, clueless. Should I call the city services at 311 and lodge a complaint? Contemplating the scripted responses from the real people there, and the predictable inaction that will ensue, I pause. “It is important to add your voice, stand and be counted”, a little voice goes off in my head. So another complaint is lodged. This one will be forwaded to the local precinct for non-emergency response, I am told.
What is your story? Will you make your voice count?
If this was ancient Rome, I would have assumed a whole lot of people who were lolling about got one hell of a whipping from somebody somewhere, and when the whipping was done, they got another whipping. A little over a month ago, our pitiful handful of workers grew in force to a battalion, and the larger bunch is energized in a way previously unknown to this project. There’s almost continuous activity on every block from 91st Street to 96th Street; on the roadway, in the roadway, down the roadways that connect to the eastern portion of Second Avenue. The entire manner of the project has changed. When before there was a small crew working millimeter by millimeter on discrete portions, now there are workers everywhere with many more machines, and many machines not seen before on this project in an all out offensive to move the utilities (sewage, water mains, telephone, cable tv, natural gas, et al) out of the way of what will be the tunnel boring machine (TBM), and attendant subway station. Of course, when you move fast, there are casualties. Noise, dirt, even getting into our buildings and places of work can be difficult because of sudden obstructions, or even the loss of entrances for a period altogether. I don’t know what it was like to live in Robert Moses’s day, but we are powerless to influence the machine at work. In a way this is refreshing. There’s serious action now. To the uninformed eye, it appears they’ve done on the eastern side of Second Avenue in 5 weeks, what took about 6 months to do equivalent work on the western side of the street. There is truth in what Deep Sleeprived says, there is a loss of serenity in these parts. On the other hand, there is progress.
[…] and cutting various services, the Second Ave. Subway is facing the same fiscal problems. Already over budget and behind schedule, the Second Ave. Subway is now facing the dreaded project modification axe as […]