In our lifetimes, the SAS has always been a two-track subway. Even the abortive 1960s plan was two tracks. In the current design, the only place that would have had the third track was the 72nd Street station itself (and its approaches)—nowhere else. Hence, the 3rd track would have provided no relief if there were a breakdown along the line, unless that breakdown just happened to occur right at 72nd Street.

As noted, the 3rd track at 72nd Street would have provided some operating flexibility, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the viability of the rest of the project. If anything, it improves the prospects, since it hastens the completion of Phase I, and no one will fund anything else till that is done.

The problem with the 4,5, and 6 is twofold. First, it is the only train that goes north of 59th Street on the East Side. The second problem is that it is the only East Side train period that goes to the financial district, at least on an express line. The other trains that go to the financial district go down the West Side or come in from Brooklyn and Queens via the LES. Even if you are coming from Midtown, you can use alternate trains than the 4 or 5, but you will always wind up changing to the 4 or 5 anyway at City Hall, or going all the way to the West Side to transfer to the 1,2,3,A,C, or E.

Just running the Q up the UES means residents would still have to either change to the 2 or 3 at Times Square, or the 4 or 5 at Union Square, to get the financial district, and those lines would still be overcrowded.

With a stop at Hanover Square, the 2nd Avenue Subway would have solved this problem. One possibility would be to extend the Q up the UES, and then run the Q express down the R route, with having it go from Canal to City Hall then to either Cortland or Whitehall, keeping Rector as a local stop only. This could possibly mess up service in Brooklyn, but it would be a cheap way to simulate what the 2nd Avenue Subway was supposed to do, especially as the 2nd Avenue Suway was less useful in the neighborhoods south of Midtown since it was running express only and no mid-East Village stop was planned.

However, by cutting the 3rd, track this just ads to my theory that the MTA’s actual fail-safe plan is abandon phases 2-4 and use Phase 1 as a permanent extension of the Q with no additional lines.

I think the eventual fate of the SAS, will be a 5 stop extension of the Q to the UES. That solves most of the vocal problems of not enough subway service from the active voting constituents in that part of town. Really, it was mostly the UES that was complaining about lack of service. Extending the Q only solves that it a much cheaper way.

As long as the MTA is heading this project, it’ll be decades before the 2nd Ave Subway reaches 96th Street. It took them 30 years to finish the 63rd Street Tunnel and 20 years to finish fixing the Manhattan Bridge.

An excerpt from a 1992 U.S. Department of Transportation document called “Developing a Long-Range Transportation Plan” courtesy of http://www.nycsubway.org.

The main reason why the 70 year planning history of the Second Avenue line has never yielded a working subway is because its high capital cost and lengthy construction period always seem to place it just beyond our functional reach, so postponements become inevitable. The best way to avoid this in the future might be to adopt an “incremental” approach to its construction that would yield relatively early transportation benefits for each additional stage of investment…

The document went on to suggest using trolleys as a stop gap, but nowadays Bus Rapid Transit would be more cost effective.

…Such a scenario might take a long time to play out completely. Possibly even as long as another 70 years. But during this period, new increments of service would be coming into operation. And we would retain the option to stop at any point (for a few years or forever) without losing the benefits of the investments already made.

Even after 16 years, this is the most candid and realistic outlook on subway construction in NYC. As Alon mentioned above, since the opening of London’s Metropolitan Railway, NYC allowed trolleys and els to be built as stop gaps until the city had political will and finances to build the IRT.

And it still took forty years. The city first floated the idea for a subway around the same time the Underground opened, in the mid-1860s. The subway started running in 1904.

One of the big problems with mass transit in the US is because of funding constraints, services are provided in a half-assed way that means they pretty much only exist on paper. Rail lines, when they exist, that stop miles from anyplace most people will want to go, buses that operate more than fifteen minutes apart and move at a crawl, and everything so subject to delays that you can’t rely on the service, meaning you pretty much can’t need to get anyplace quickly to use it. The result is money spent on a mass transit service with low ridership, because its provided in a way thats practically impossible for people to use. There is a point where things shouldn’t be built if they can’t be built properly.

Its pretty clear where the 2nd Avenue Subway is heading, and after three baits and switches (the public approves funds to build the thing, only to have the funds disappear), why should the public trust that any state or city government program or project will actually provide the promised service?