Nothing it seems has captured the attention of a certain group of commuters quite like the Bleecker St./Broadway-Lafayette rehab. The construction — well over budget and at least seven months behind its initial schedule — promises to deliver a key transfer between the uptown East Side IRT local and the IND Sixth Avenue line, thus streamlining commutes for many.
As recently as February, the MTA had vowed to open the transfer by the end of June, but the end of June has come and gone. There is no transfer, and there is no real date yet of an impending ribbon-cutting. Over the past few weeks, I’ve tried to gain some clarity into the situation but few details have emerged.
What I do know is that some departments at the MTA seems to giving out certain information through certain channels while an official opening has yet to be determined. Last week, I caught wind of a July 2 opening and posted it on Twitter. Officials denied that opening date to me on the record, and I never posted here it here as it ended up being poor information.
Yesterday, a Subchatter reportedly received an email from MTA Customer Serivce with an August opening date. Again, though, Transit spokespeople denied such a date. The August date is incorrect but officials “haven’t determined” an exact launch. A recent photo shared by Kris Arnold on Twitter shows work still in progress. With one department at the MTA saying one thing and another saying something else, the left and right hands do not appear to be working together.
So we’re left still waiting. It’s now taken longer to rebuild and properly connect this station than it did to build the entire first part of the IRT in the early 1900s. At some point this summer, the transfer will open, but for now, an ongoing delay continues to plague the project.
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