With subway construction come neighborhood gripes. As the Second Ave. Subway continues what one reporter recently termed its “unhurried pace” toward completion, residents along Second Ave. are learning that life with subway construction and life with an eventual subway line isn’t as rosy as it first sounds. Today, we will explore two stories about life on the East Side and the real estate problems presented by the Second Ave. Subway. Part I, I examined the eight ventilation structures soon to appear on the Upper East Side. Part two focuses on station entrances.
The planned entrance at 72nd St. is one of two that have come under community fire. (All images via the SAS Task Force report to CB 8. PDF file from Oct. 28, 2008. Click to enlarge.)
When planning a transit route, the entrance points can be quite vital to the way a neighborhood forms or responds to new stations, and a trip through New York’s subways show no uniformity in exit points. Some are in the front of trains; others in back; still others in the middle. Still other stations have entrances in both the front and the back or at two mid-way points along the platform.
For the Second Ave. Subway, the MTA has tried to maximize the area served by one station. All of the new stations will include two entrances — one in the front and one in the back. For instance, the 72nd St. stop, seen above, will allow straphangers to enter at 69th St. or 72nd St., thus minimizing the walking distance for subway-bound pedestrians.
Yet, despite these conveniences, some Upper East Side residents weren’t happy with the MTA’s design process and the lack of community input during the initial planning stages. All’s well that ends well for these Co-Op Boards though, and as Habitat Magazine detailed, the MTA was willing to work with community groups to respond to resident complaints. Bill Morris tells the story:
The original plan called for two entrances where a reasonable person might expect to find them – at the northeast and northwest corners of Second Avenue and 72nd Street. But in fall 2007, the MTA decided to move the northeast-corner entrance to the middle of the block on the north side of East 72nd Street, between First and Second Avenues. Not only that, the MTA proposed two mid-block entrances pro-tected by soaring glass canopies. That got the neighborhood’s attention.
“We accepted that there was going to be a subway stop at Second Avenue,” says Valerie Mason, vice president of the co-op board at 320 East 72nd Street, a 40-unit building erected in the late 1920s. “Then, literally overnight, the station entrances were moved from the corner to the middle of the block. They looked like two huge soccer goals. The MTA said they had encountered some problems at the corner. What I saw was an attractive nuisance and a safety hazard.”
…Phyllis Weisberg, a partner at the law firm of Kurzman Karelsen & Frank, filed a lawsuit in state court on behalf of the co-ops at 320 and 340 East 72nd Street. Two co-ops across the street filed a similar suit in federal court. “The basis for the lawsuits was that under state and federal law, certain environmental impact studies have to be done and public hearings have to be held,” Weisberg says. “Five days after the [2007] public hearing, the MTA said they were moving the entrance. They did that without studies or a public hear-ing.”
As momentum grew, neighborhood efforts coalesced into a successful lobbying effort. Residents made their concerns heard at Community Board meetings with MTA officials and in correspondence with City Council members. In the end, the MTA’s Supplemental Environmental Assessment to the Second Avenue Subway Final Environmental Impact Statement, available here in full, focused around the original corner exits on 72nd St. The neighbors had made their concerns — design and safety worries and not NIMBY protectionism — heard, and the authority responded in turn.
At 86th St., the residents are waging a similar fight but with less organization. The MTA hasn’t yet determined the location of the entrance at the northern end of 86th St. It had been originally planned to include within the building at 305 E. 86th St. but has proposed moving it to the north side of 86th St. east of Second Ave. The federal government has found no significant environmental impact in this change, but residents are protesting.
No decision has been reached on that entrance yet, and the MTA is open to neighborhood imput. Only time will tell if the residents at 86th St. can find common ground as those at 72nd St. did.
24 comments
I’d say that I’m surprised that they can begin building an entire subway line without knowing where its entrances and exits will be located, but, given the gross incompetence of the agency managing and conducting construction, I guess I’m not surprised.
I would think that they took care of this beforehand. What a mess.
I’m not sure why you think it’s a mess. The last part of the subway to get built are the stations, and it’s far better to begin the time-consuming process — digging the tunnels — while still working with the neighborhoods to plan a bunch of staircases than it is to wait on a fully finalized design. If anything, this just shows that the MTA is listening and willing to work with the neighborhood groups.
The station placement is non-trivial, and interacts with traffic. For example, the MTA had originally intended the 72nd Street entrances to be at 72nd and 76th, to be closer to 79th. In either case, presumably the primary entrance to 72nd would be at 72nd, and the primary entrance to 86th would be at 86th. Is it better to keep all primary entrances at one end of the platform, in this case the north end? Or is it better to spread them around to even the load?
Let me explain why this and every other course of action taken in constructing this extension of the Q line to 125th St. is a mess.
As you know, the MTA gets its money from city, state, and sometimes federal tax money, in addition to fare money from customers, many of whom have no choice but to ride with MTA because cars are expensive and stupid and bicycling is not an option for everyone. You go to law school, Kabak, so I’ll put it this way: to me, the MTA owes everyone it affects – businesses, residents, customers, etc., a duty of utmost diligence and care.
When streets and sidewalks along 2nd Ave. are torn up to the point that 2 people walking side by side barely fit on the sidewalk, and then 2 weeks later work starts on moving utilities, that duty is violated.
When a project that causes evictions and will cause businesses to fail or struggle gets extended indefinitely into the future, that duty is violated. These aren’t mega-corporations for the most part, these are sole proprietors trying to get by. Sidewalk space is important to them.
When entrances and exits aren’t planned beforehand and are subject to change, forcing residents to coalesce and instigate changes in plans, that duty is violated. People shouldn’t have to worry about subway entrances being built in the middle of a street and then organize to stop it from happening. That’s a waste of their time and it’s the MTA’s job to put the entrances in the right place – on corners.
I don’t care about when contractors show up and the difficulties with coordinating all the workers together and all that stuff. Using our tax and fare money, it’s the MTA’s job to get it done efficiently.
I don’t care that they build entrances and exits last. The MTA is wasting the time of the people that have to organize against it. They ought to have it right, and planned, in the first place.
To me, that’s how it should be for $4.5 billion dollars and a decade of construction, all to make 7 more stops on the Q train.
When entrances and exits aren’t planned beforehand and are subject to change, forcing residents to coalesce and instigate changes in plans, that duty is violated. People shouldn’t have to worry about subway entrances being built in the middle of a street and then organize to stop it from happening. That’s a waste of their time and it’s the MTA’s job to put the entrances in the right place – on corners.
That’s not quite what happened though. They were planned ahead of time based upon numerous studies and hearings throughout the 1990s. In an EIS, the MTA proposed a variety of options, some more preferable to others, and then picked ones once the Feds gave it the environmental OK. As time went on, the MTA had to adjust some plans, but as construction approached, neighborhood groups realized the shortcomings of the some of the MTA’s new plans. They banded together to work with the MTA on constructive solutions them.
I think it’s pretty clear that, in the long run, the SAS has been a mess. It’s over budget and delayed by half a decade from the original projected launch date. In that sense, the MTA has certainly violated whatever duty – a moral/ethical one and not a legal one – they have to the Upper East Side.
But the MTA did plan it right the first time, and now neighborhood groups want them to plan right again. I don’t see how that’s wasting someone’s time.
As for the individual cost of building a subway, that’s construction of a megaproject. In the end, more people will benefit in the future than will suffer in the present. Call it heartless if you will, but it’s simple economics.
I don’t want to beat this to death, but your post made it seem like the MTA pulled a switcheroo. I don’t know the intricacies of the MTA and its planning, that’s why I love your site, but –
“We accepted that there was going to be a subway stop at Second Avenue,” says Valerie Mason, vice president of the co-op board at 320 East 72nd Street, a 40-unit building erected in the late 1920s. “Then, literally overnight, the station entrances were moved from the corner to the middle of the block.”
Regardless, I will continue to speak out against any and all wasteful uses of our money. Yes it’s not a legal duty, but as you said, it is an unrecognized moral/ethical one.
Meh. My issue with the glass boxes isn’t the visual impact; it’s the cost. When your budgeted cost per route-km is close to three times the cost of the most expensive line ever built outside New York, and four to five times the cost of most other lines built in high-cost cities, you don’t have the luxury of building palatial subway entrances.
Precisely.
I’d love to have a subway entrance directly outside my building!
Amen, brother!
Wait, residents are complaining not that entrances are too far from their buildings, but that they are too close!? Is there some other incentive for them to attack the MTA about this, or are they just masochists who want to force themselves to walk further?
I think the lesson is this: in a city with a population surpassing eight million, you can’t please everyone.
The residents of 320 E 72nd don’t want an entrance in front of their building because…? Will it block the doorman’s view? Do their kids play soccer or does the building hold weekend BBQs right out front? No, the long-and-short of it is they want the subway, they want the convenience of an easy commute downtown, but the usual NIMFY (Not in My Front Yard) mindset takes over.
As a resident of Staten Island (and a long-time former UES resident), I would L-O-V-E a subway entrance in front of my apt bldg. If only the MTA would actually build one out here, which we’ve been crying for almost as long as the UES has been asking for a Second Ave subway. You wanted it, you got it.
Meh. I’m still trying to figure out why they’re doing deep-tunnel boring instead of cut-and-cover–other than because “that’s the way we build subways now”.
Exactly.
Because the MTA would rather make business life a living hell just near the stations rather than on all of Second Avenue.
Yeah, but it would theoretically be a lot faster than the deep tunnelling. If they threw enough workers at it, we’d have a SAS by now. Frankly, I don’t think quadupling or quintupling the price by deep tunnelling is worth it.
Actually, the deep tunnelling may well be cheaper. Especially if you have to link into a deep tunnel anyway at the south end (which you do in this case).
Now as for the Phase 2 extension, from a cut-and-cover tunnel north to 125th street — the only reason to go deep there is to get under the Harlem River.
Think about the two years delay from utility relocation in the Launch Box area.
Multiply by the *entire length of Second Avenue*.
That’s why they’re doing deep bored tunnels.
If you could get all the utilities under one roof (have the MTA buy Con Ed and Empire City Subway?) then you could make a masterplan and build a subway-utility combined line and benefit greatly. Like the Embankment in London. But that seems out of scope at the moment.
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