When the MTA released its proposed 2010-2014 capital program earlier this week, my first run through the massive PDF focused on the Second Ave. Subway. As construction on the much-needed and much-delayed subway line continues apace on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, I was curious to see how the MTA was budgeting and planning for the next five years of construction.
The answer, to me, is disheartening. The upcoming capital campaign focuses solely on the ongoing work needed to wrap up Phase I of this ambition subway line. Phase II is mentioned only as a glimpse of future possibility, and even the Twenty Year Capital Needs Assessment (PDF here) makes a half-hearted case for the full line. New York might get its Second Ave. Subway, but it might just be a shadow of what it should be.
To recap, the current construction focuses around a northern extension of the current Q line. When Phase I is completed in, according to the proposed capital plan, December 2016, it will involve three new subway stops and a two reconfigured old ones. Currently, the Q terminates at 57th St. and Broadway. In seven years or so, the Q will held north under Central Park to the current F stop at 63rd St. and Lexington. While the F continues to Roosevelt Island, the Q will head east and north to Second Ave. where it will stop at 72nd St., 86th St. and 96th St.
While not the full subway line we want, Phase I of the Second Ave. Subway is better than nothing. It will immediately alleviate the overcrowding that currently plagues the Lexington Ave. subway lines, and according to the capital program, “by 2030, SAS Phase I is projected to carry 191,000 riders.”
And that right there is the problem. The MTA’s document does not say that, by 2030, the SAS will carry 191,000. It mentions Phase I and only Phase I. In the preceding paragraphs, the capital program touches briefly upon the full Second Ave. Subway. Once targeted for a 2020 completion date, the full-length Second Ave. Subway remains an idea on paper with no set end-date in mind. In fact, even transfers once proposed for 55th, 42nd, 14th and Houston Sts. remain under evaluation.
With this 2010-2014 capital program, the MTA will hopefully secure the balance of funds for the Second Ave. Subway. To complete just Phase I of the eight-decade project, the MTA is asking for $1.4 billion. The total cost, then, of this 40-block subway extension will come to at least $4.451 billion.
Meanwhile, the Twenty Year Capital Needs Assessment is nearly silent on the future of the Second Ave. Subway. It mentions the subway line on just two of 97 pages, and that section mostly focuses on Phase I. As to the other phases, this document says, “Phases II – IV will generate similar benefits and must be advanced in future.”
Ah, the future. Someone somewhere in the future is riding a Second Ave. Subway up and down Manhattan. For now, though, we’ll just have to wait. Maybe Phase II will pop up in the 2015-2019 capital plan. It will be just another “next time” for this subway line.
19 comments
Three new stops and two renovations for $4.5 billion? Who says construction isn’t lucrative?
I count an additional 12 stops that are proposed for the SAS. 12 x 4.5 = $54 billion.
Please tell me that Phase 1 was the most complicated part, and that the rest of the line will be cheaper and faster to build.
Why is each station $4.5 billion?
All things being equal, future phases should be cheaper. A lot of the tunnel for Phase 2 already exists. The 125th St. SAS station sits beneath the 125th St Lexington Ave line station, so it could possibly share entrances and require less work on the street (if the current entrances have adequate capacity). Same thing for the “under evaluation” transfers in the phases to the south.
There should also be some lessons learned from Phase 1 that could make future phases more efficient. It’s been a long time since a new line was built, and much of that expertise has been forgotten or outdated.
Of course, costs of materials and labor may rise, but should remain proportionate with inflation.
I recently relocated to East Harlem from DC — been reading your blog on and for a long time. One of the first things I noticed up here on 2nd Ave is evidence of the line work built in the 1970s. There are NY Subway maintenance portals at a couple places at least one capped entrance? Not sure what that is at 117th and 2nd but I assume it has something to do with the subway. Either for maintenance or an entrance. Large concrete slab in a currently fenced off yard. I assume there’s lots of other infrastructure like that already in place? (I hadn’t realized there was a hidden level below the 125th street station.)
I should clarify — the 125th Street station WILL sit underneath the 4/5/6 station. I don’t believe it exists today (especially since it will run perpendicular to the Lex line), but staircases may only need to go up as far as the existing mezzanine and not to the street.
They REALLY need to relax the EIS rules for things that will have a positive impact on the environment. The EIS should just be restricted to construction impacts. This is the reason why heavy rail is so expensive (but not as expensive as highways, which people are more than happy to waste money on), and there are so many parts of the country that NEED heavy rail (Boston and Philly come to mind off the top of my head, but also New York, Chicago, DC, San Fran, and even LA and Portland if it continues to grow at the rate it’s growing) but won’t get it because of cost concerns.
Meanwhile there are some heavy rail lines that can actually be built for cheap money: one example is an extension of the PATH line west from Pavonia/Newport to Secaucus. The ROW is all there and grade separated until you get to downtown Secaucus. And that would actually open up some new swaths of land to transit: you can now get a one seat ride from Secaucus to lower Manhattan, and you can even serve the transit-starved downtown Secaucus, plus you can get some more PATH stations in the JC Heights and one at Hamilton Park.
And while they’re wasting money on the 7 line boondoggle (which wouldn’t be so if they just built the station at 41st and 10th), the VERY necessary SAS and lines that would be more important (such as a line under Metropolitan Avenue, a beltline using the old New York Connecting Railroad ROW, or maybe even an extension of the 2 to Flatlands) get thrown by the wayside.
How right you are about the 10th Ave. station that was originally supposed to be included.
The gap betwen Times Square and Javits Center will be the longest gap between two consecutive stations in the entire system, except where you are crossing a river.
I agree that existing rail and ROW should be fully utilized. That’s what they’re doing (or talking about doing) along the north shore of Staten Island, and what Lee Sander proposed for that circuitous route through Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. It may not attract the same ridership as some of the others, but considering the (relatively) low cost and quick speed, it still should be worth it.
Which makes me wonder why the Port Authority can’t do it on the 6th street easement in Jersey City and under the Bergen Arches….
In San Francisco and Los Angeles, subway costs are about $300,000,000 per mile, one seventh as much as the average for the full SAS. So it can’t be just the EIS process.
What else could it be? In LA in particular there probably isn’t a big mess of utilities that need to be moved.
In Los Angeles & San Francisco, subways need to be up to earthquake standereds acounting for the aditional cost. It has been said that the safest place in L A durring an earthquake is in the Red Line subway do to all of the reenforced walls & other elements put in durring construction.
BART has been upgrading there system to bring it up to earthquake standereds as well, retrofitting trackways, stations, slabs & other elements.
Absolutely deplorable public building programs. EIS in California is incredibly expensive. And includes things like sunlight modeling that people in the rest of the country never even think about. There was an article over winter by former Mass. governor Dukakis about need for better construction management and estimating — citing how much cost escalation there was under the Romney on the Big Dig.
Government agency has cut back staff that can do the kind of cost estimation and production management that keep things under check and replaced with private contractors that aren’t beholden to protecting cost overruns.
Other things to consider in comparing, LA is actually cheaper than SF as it tends to require less public input during planning and EIS stages. Although, you are partly right there are more underground utilities. As well construction industry is not been as long a place for government, union and mafia graft.
“The MTA’s document does not say that, by 2003, the SAS will carry 191,000.”
You meant 2030, right?
Well, presumably the document does NOT say that the SAS will carry 191,000 passengers by 2003.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. I fixed the typo.
In the future, if you could contact me with corrections instead of leaving them as comments, I would appreciate it!
Just some random math… at a cost of $4.451 billion servicing 191,000 riders, that means phase I would cost $23,300 per rider. Is that number supposed to be individual daily riders?
[Sigh] Here’s hoping the future will be about the Culver viaduct, the North Shore SIRT, and the Rogers Avenue Junction on the B’klyn IRT.
[…] about Phases II, III and IV, and in its Twenty Year Capital Needs Assessment, the MTA offered up nothing too concrete. In fact, the rest of the SAS generated just one line in a 97-page PDF document: “Phases II […]