As London’s expenses for the games spiral well above budge, I wanted to revisit and revise an old post on the 7 line extension and how the failed Olympics bid changed the project. What would have happened, I asked, had the city secured the Olympics. Let’s find out.

The 7 line project — one now destined to serve residents of a real estate complex not yet built or even paid for — got its start in Bloomberg’s desires to see the Olympics come to New York. It was that same desire and the subsequent loss of the games to London that has led to the downfall of the station at 41st and 10th Ave.

We know the project’s recently history fairly well. The project’s design phase started in 2002 when Bloomberg launched his plan to develop Manhattan’s last great frontier, the Hudson Yards land. At the time, the Mayor hoped to lure the Jets from New Jersey with a stadium that would also serve as the home for the 2012 Summer Olympics. In June 2005, amidst massive public protest, the state legislature failed to guarantee financing for the stadium, and a few months later, the IOC, citing that failure, awarded the Olympics to London.

Still, the 7 line extension did not die with the Olympics. Originally, the project’s timetable was an aggressive one. Project Design Completion was due to be wrapped up by December 2006 with construction beginning that year and revenue service in time for the Olympics in 2012. Today, the MTA still lists TBD as the Project Design Completion date. Construction started on December 15, 2007, over a year later than originally anticipated, and revenue service is right now scheduled to start during December of 2013. The MTA will miss those Summer Olympics by a good 17 months.

Over the course of project’s history, the City and MTA have fought over nearly every aspect of it. The City, the primary funding partner for this extension, refused to fund cost overruns and an expensive station stop at 41st and 10th Ave. The MTA has had trouble securing a deal for the land rights to the Hudson Yards area, and the current $1 billion offer from Related is on borrowed time, already one month past the anticipated closing date.

What though would have happened if the Olympics had come to New York? For that, we hit the maps. Take a look at the map below. It is an excerpt from a special map the MTA printed in 2005 showing the potential locations for all of the Olympics events. (To view the map in full, click here.)

Any Olympics plan for the city included heavy usage of the Far West Side. The Javits Center would have hosted six key events, including weightlifting, fencing, wrestling and table tennis, and the planned West Side stadium would have featured some track-and-field contests and the soccer matches. To ensure capacity for those events, the city would have needed a subway stop at 34th St. and 11th Ave. and probably would have paid to build the one at 41st and 10th as well. Instead, the costs skyrocketed, and we’re left with REBNY’s protests, years too late.

Today, progress along the 7 line may be slightly delayed. MTA Capital Construction will release an update within the next few months, but revenue service may not start until the first quarter of 2014. Michael Horodniceanu, head of the unit, has said the Mayor will ride the subway he views as his legacy whether it is a test train or not. No one though is surprised at the delay. Meanwhile, we can remember when the Olympics nearly came to New York. Enthusiasm amongst city residents was decidedly mixed, but the subways would have benefited once the athletes all went home. The station at 41st St. would have been a reality instead of a lost opportunity.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

As amNew York reports, Horodniceanu spoke at yesterday’s MTA Board committee meetings and explained that a few undisclosed problems may delay the project two or three months into 2014. Instead of being revenue-ready by December 2013, the project could be ready only for testing by then. The full extent of the delays will be revealed at next month’s meeting, but Horodniceanu did promise that the project’s funding partner “will ride a train” to Hudson Yards.

For the MTA, these delays are old hat even as Horodniceanu has vowed to keep the megaprojects on target. For what it’s worth, though, the 7 line extension, despite this delay, is still under budget by “tens of millions” of dollars. It’s also short a station, but that is a well-beaten dead horse at this point.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

The new Manhattan terminus for the 7 train will feature a lengthy mezzanine and a direct entrance into the Javits Center. (Click the image to enlarg)

During the one and only time I went into the construction site for the 7 line extension, I wasn’t allowed to bring a camera. It is, as any subway construction site is, a grandiose cavern with equipment everywhere. When I saw it this past summer, eventual platforms were under construction and the two-story cavern was receiving its finishing touches.

Today, The Architect’s Newspaper shares some photos and renderings from the site. Tom Stoelker had a chance to journey down to 34th ST. and 11th Ave. late last month, and today, he published his piece on the site. It has photos of the work in progress as well as the latest in renderings. The scene above shows the station mezzanine, complete with entrance to the seemingly doomed Javits Center, and his post also features a nifty cutaway of the 7 train’s new deep cavern station.

The 7 line extension is still set to open in December of 2013, less than two years from now. By then, hopefully, work will have started at the Hudson Yards site, and we’ll have a better sense of what the future holds for the Javits Center. The subway, which has long ushered in development to the city’s wilds, will be there waiting for it all to grow.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

Art at the new 63rd Street station will evoke the former Second Avenue elevated trains.

I’ve been sitting on this one for a couple of weeks, but it’s still timely. A few weeks ago in The Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Maloney profiled my favorite under-the-radar MTA department. She highlighted the upcoming plans for art installations at the MTA’s new stations. Along the 7 line extension and underneath Second Ave., the authority will soon have four blank canvases, and they’re planning new art for each station.

She writes:

As subway riders descend the escalator into a new 7 line station near 10th Avenue and 34th Street in 2013, they will be followed by a mosaic of brightly colored celestial orbs shining from a deep blue sky. At a planned Second Avenue subway stop at 63rd Street, the walls will display photographs evoking the elevated trains that once rumbled above. And a station at 96th Street will feature line drawings fired onto ceramic tiles, playing with perspectives as travelers move through the space.

The designs are part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to make each of its new subway stations on the extended 7 line and new Second Avenue line a massive work of public art. Building on the MTA’s nearly three-decade history of enlivening subway and commuter rail stations with mosaics and sculpture, the agency has commissioned art that accompanies riders from the sidewalk to the platform and helps shape spaces that haven’t yet been built.

The effort is ongoing: The MTA last week issued a call for artists for the Second Avenue line’s 72nd Street station. “It’s very exciting,” said Sandra Bloodworth, director of the MTA’s Arts for Transit and Urban Design program, who, along with the artists, discussed details of the projects for the first time. “It’s three New Yorkers, three visions. I think that reflects the subway; it reflects our ridership.”

As Maloney notes, the MTA allocates a small portion of the construction costs to artwork. The new installations are expected to cost between $900,000 and a $1 million each and are a part of projects that will cost a few billion dollars each. It’s a great program that livens up the subways, turning them into the city’s most extensive art gallery. Check out Maloney’s piece for more renderings of the upcoming art. Jean Shin’s work at 63rd St., which, according to Maloney, will “depict the 1942 dismantling of the Second Avenue elevated line and the opening of the sky over an area accustomed to rumbling and shadows,” sounds particularly intriguing.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

Should the 7 line head to Hoboken instead of Secaucus? (Map via The Wall Street Journal)

It’s been a few months since we’ve heard much about the city’s nascent plans to send the 7 line to Secaucus. In October, we heard reports that Mayor Bloomberg will push to get the $10 billion extension off the ground before he leaves office in 2013. It would be his shining transit moment and could transform cross-Hudson commuting.

But what if sending the train to Secaucus is only half of a good idea? Maybe the 7 should cross the Hudson, but maybe it should have a different destination. Last November, we heard rumblings of this thought as the region’s planners offered their opinions on the Secaucus extension. At the time, former Transit planner Bob Previdi suggested sending the subway to Newark Airport or even Hoboken, a major hub for New Jersey Transit service that is even closer than Secaucus.

This week, for Crain’s New York, Previdi trumpets a refined idea: The 7 should go to Hoboken instead of Secaucus. He writes:

There are three important reasons to consider Hoboken over Secaucus. First, extending the No. 7 to Secaucus would take 21,000 feet of construction, while Hoboken Terminal sits only 9,000 feet away, which would incur billions less in construction costs.

Second, Hoboken Terminal is a huge facility with plenty of spare capacity. It sits on 50 acres, has 17 platform tracks and is used by only 32,000 passengers a day. By comparison, New York’s Penn Station sits on two blocks, has 21 tracks and is used by over 500,000 passengers a day. It has no spare capacity. Third, the original ARC project was designed to double NJ Transit’s rail ridership—Secaucus is not capable of accomplishing this without major track changes. Only two tracks lead into Secaucus from Newark, which is why it is a major choke point on the Northeast Corridor.

Mr. Bloomberg’s initial response to the canceled ARC project would work brilliantly in Manhattan because it uses spare capacity on the No. 7 to avoid building a station under Macy’s. By the same token, Hoboken has spare terminal and track capacity and is much closer to the 7 than Secaucus. Marrying Hoboken Terminal and the 7 would cost half as much as the other projects, or less.

As the finer points of the engineering study for the plan to send the subway to Secaucus have yet to be released, it’s tough for me to pass judgment on Previdi’s idea. It’s worth noting too that Hoboken already has a subway system in PATH that connects to Manhattan. I can say however that Previdi presents an intriguing competing plan. He is very much in support of the mayor’s pet project, but he wants to see something realized that will help with New Jersey Transit’s capacity problems. Ultimately, that might be too tall an order for a subway extension, but if someone is going to sink $10 billion into a trans-Hudson tunnel, it must deliver returns.

It’s been 15 months since Gov. Chris Christie torpedoed the ARC Tunnel. At the time, as Previdi notes, he promised to “consider more reasonable solutions to meet NJ Transit’s goals.” Maybe throwing New Jersey’s support behind a subway extension will be considered a more reasonable solution, but maybe the 7 can’t do as much as the region wants and needs. Still, if this project is to move forward, we must consider all possibilities, and Hoboken is indeed out there, awaiting its attention and perhaps a subway stop too.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

Charles Bagli’s concept for his Times piece is an intuitive one: Mayor Bloomberg’s plans for Far West Side were designed to showcase the 2012 Olympics, but by losing out on those Summer Games, the West Side has benefited from mixed-use development far more than it otherwise would have. New York anticipates constructing more office space in Hudson Yards than in some small cities, and a variety of residential buildings have opened from 42nd St. down to 29th St. A few thousand new residential units will anchor the commercial areas, and the 7 line will bring everyone there.

There is, of course, one grand omission from both Bagli’s article and the city’s West Side plans, and that is a subway stop at 41st and 10th Ave. Originally part of the 7 line extension, the station was axed amidst concerns of rising costs. The project likely would have carried a $3 billion price tag otherwise, and only the barest of provisioning for a future station has been put into place.

By omitting a station in an area surrounded by both new and old developments, the city clearly decided to pursue uncharted opportunities above Hudson Yards, and that’s a serious omission in the tale of West Side Renaissance. It’s a short-sighted one that will cost New York and its residents more money in the future. While the Far West Side development deserves praise, we should not forget the mistakes of planning as well.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

The MTA late last week unveiled a new video glimpse inside the 7 line extension,and progress is moving quickly. According to the video, the build-out of the station at 34th St. and 11th Ave. has been completed ahead of schedule, and the area is ready for the vast array of finishes, ventilation structures and signals that must be installed before the extension enters revenue service by the end of 2013.

Throughout the video, Shawn Kildare from MTA Capital Construction calls the terminal a real “21st century station” with ample room for passengers to circulate throughout the space. It will connect the Javits Center and the Hudson Yards development to the subway, but it won’t provide a station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. The barest of provisioning has been implemented to ensure future work if the funds are ever in place, but this project should be remembered for what it failed to deliver to Hells Kitchen as much as for it promises to deliver to the Far West Side.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

As the crow flies, Secaucus is closing to Midtown than Staten Island is.

In news that will shock no one, New Jersey is willing to throw its political support behind Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to send the 7 train to Secaucus while Staten Island politicians are objecting. As the plan exists right now as nothing more than a long-standing dream suddenly drawing Bloomberg’s attention, the cross-border state politics and interborough maneuverings will likely dominate the coverage as long as the idea is still alive.

The first word from west of Hudson came from Gov. Chris Christie earlier this week. He likes the project because it requires less of an investment from New Jersey and because New York would pick up some of the tab — an aspect of ARC that led to resentment over the project’s funding. Christie, who didn’t say too much this week, proclaimed that New Jersey will “do our share.” in a radio interview, he said, “All of this will be able to come together.”

Staten Islanders, meanwhile, had far more to say about the project, and none of it involved much praise. Already smarting over Port Authority fare hikes that they said unfairly impact their constituents, Staten Island politicians banded together to oppose the project. Calling upon Gov. Andrew Cuomo to help improve Staten Island’s transit options, the bipartisan group bemoaned the focus on New Jersey in a letter to Albany.

“”This is a project that is worthy of consideration in the future. Now is not the time to explore more ways to get from New Jersey to Manhattan when it’s our toll money paying for it,” the letter said. “We would also encourage you to have your appointees on the Port Authority Board reject any funding for exorbitant projects until we have reached an agreement on how we can lessen the overall financial impact for residents of Richmond County. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey simply must find alternative means of revenue, then off the backs of Staten Islanders.”

Allen Cappelli, an MTA Board member from Staten Island, expressed his concern that the 7 line extension was targeting the wrong folk. “I applaud the mayor for his vision of connecting part of the region to the transit system. I’d hoped that his vision would include Staten Island and its 500,000 residents,” he said. “We ought to be talking about connecting Staten Island too. hat’s regional interconnectivity. It’s fine to give lip service to the world’s greatest parking lot – the Staten Island Expressway – but words are not good enough.”

The keys though are demographics, geography and politics. If the Mayor’s goal is to increase the region’s interconnectivity while alleviating congestion across the Hudson and shepherding people to the Hudson Yards development and Midtown, the 7 line extension to Secaucus makes far more sense than a subway to Staten Island. The population density in Hudson County is nearly double that of Staten Island, and the New Jersey county, separated from the city by only a river and a state border, is closer to Midtown than the borough of Staten Island is. It is also is home to more people who work in Manhattan than Staten Island is. Finally, a subway to New Jersey could draw on funding from two states and the Port Authority while New York would likely have to foot the entire bill for any Staten Island-centric improvements.

Of course, that bill remains problematic. No one knows how much this will cost and who’s going to pay. One commentator though has found the perfect donor. If Mayor Bloomberg is so concerned with building his legacy, Stephen Smith writing at Forbes says, why doesn’t he just cut the check for construction himself? It would indeed be a groundbreaking public/private partnership.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

Could the future route of the 7 train take it across the Hudson River? (Via The Wall Street Journal)

By dropping word of his support for a Secaucus-bound 7 train this week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg reminded us once again of his ability to draw a spotlight. With New York and New Jersey transit advocates largely despairing over the lack of transit on the new Tappan Zee Bridge, Bloomberg seemingly us a bone with a show of support for the 7 plan. If anything, the timing has helped restart the debate over the practicality, feasibility and intentions behind the plan.

On Wednesday, after The Post’s story made the rounds, the Mayor faced the New York press corps and went on the record with some support for a trans-Hudson rail crossing. “We want better transportation from here to all the markets, all of the places that people live that want to come into this city to work and to shop and have their entertainment,” he said. “This is something where the economics seem to make some sense. The subway extension is on budget, on time pretty much, coming down the West Side, and you could probably continue it over. There are some economic arguments that it would be justified and that we could work with New Jersey and the federal government and the state government here to get some money to do it.”

For now, we don’t know what the Parsons Brinckerhoff report will say. It’s still only a preliminary report and only those in the city government have seen it. When it’s released, we’ll have a better sense of the road ahead. Right now, though, if Bloomberg is serious about getting such an ambitious plan off the ground, he’ll have to work fast to secure funds for an environmental impact study and the project itself. He has 26 months.

Already, we’re seeing some of the benefits and challenges this project face come into view. Over at WNYC, Andrea Bernstein gathered some info. For starters, the city believes it could put together a broad coalition of funding partners that would include the city and state, New Jersey, the Port Authority and the MTA. That is, apparently, news to those entities.

The MTA is facing a set of very familiar problems. With Joe Lhota coming in, the new CEO and Chairman has a directive from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to cut costs and save money. The current capital plan has no leeway for funding such a project, and the MTA would rather see through the Second Ave. Subway before it looks to New Jersey. So far, MTA officials have tried to distance themselves from this idea. Noting that the MTA has no cash, a spokesman told Metro, “We’re focusing on the three capital projects we have now.” Transit officials said yesterday they would have no comment until the engineering study is released.

Beyond that significant obstacle, the city and PB are reportedly bullish on the popularity of such an extension. Initial estimates say the 7 extension would draw around 125,000 riders per day, thus significantly increasing crowding along the 7 line throughout Midtown Manhattan. Somehow, the IRT Flushing line stations would have to handle increasingly large crowds. In a similar vein, though, the ridership estimates show how this project would be a draw for the real estate business. As Alon Levy noted via Twitter, sending the subway through Hoboken and to Secaucus would be “a bonanza for developers.” Construction companies and landowners on both sides of the Hudson — and especially those at Hudson Yards — would be thrilled. A subway that passes under Hudson Yards from both New Jersey and the rest of New York would vastly increase the area’s popularity.

Still, despite this seemingly rosy outlook, the challenges are immense. Early reports say it could cost less than ARC as the tunneling requires no new Manhattan terminal. Rather, the MTA would simply start digging west from the tail tracks of the 7 line extension near 26th and 11th Ave. Some estimates, however, peg the cost at as much as $10 billion. With federal ARC dollars long since disbursed, any funding from DC would have originate from a new effort to drive transit dollars to the region, and this 7 line extension would just be one more megaproject competing for bucks.

Furthermore, what of the rolling stock and IRT-sized subway cars? Even though the 7 comes equipped with 11-car sets, capacity is limited by width. In an ideal world, it might make more sense to send a spur off the 8th Ave. line with its spacious IND cars to New Jersey. Bu we live in a world of practical realism. With a development at Hudson Yards spurring the discussion, the Mayor will focus only on the 7 line. Its tail tracks bring it close to New Jersey, and mighty political forces are lining up behind it.

Yet, for all of this talk of support from Bloomberg, a reticent and reluctant MTA and a project that doesn’t even have a public scoping document yet, we’re likely jumping the gun. Maybe the Mayor can deliver billions of dollars and a firm joint commitment to this project while somehow drawing a cost-conscious MTA on board. Maybe he can placate constituents throughout the five boroughs who would rather spend transit dollars on improving interborough rather than interstate access. Maybe he just won’t care about the politics because he’s a lame duck and wants a legacy. It wouldn’t be the first time Bloomberg has pushed through something he wants more than anyone else.

For now, enjoy the proverbial ride. This project has had more legs than it ever should have, and maybe one day the next stop on a Secaucus-bound 7 line will be across the river in New Jersey.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

Could the 7 trains, seen here in Flushing, be bound for Secaucus, New Jersey? (7 trains galore by flickr user SpecialKRB)

When it comes to transit planning, the concept of legacy is a dangerous one for New York politicians. Instead of finding new funding sources or promoting transit investment that improves the current system based upon need, politicians prefer something flashy that will carry their names well beyond their term-limited time in the New York arena. That is, after all, one of the reasons why Mayor Bloomberg is funding the 7 line extension to the Hudson Yards area while the Second Ave. Subway struggles to move beyond Phase 1.

Now, the Mayor is poised to push forward on a plan to extend the 7 line westward, past the boundaries of New York City, under the Hudson River and to Secaucus. It would be a monumental project with a price tag today of around $10 billion and a construction time of ten years. It would represent the first extension of the New York City subway to areas outside of New York City. With various stakeholders — including the city, New Jersey, the Port Authority, the federal government and the MTA — it has the potential to be a complicated project, but according to a report in the The Post, the mayor wants to get it off the ground before he leaves office in 2013.

This tale began last November when the city, without notifying the MTA or anyone else really, floated a plan to send the 7 to Secaucus as a potential ARC replacement. The move would provide a one-seat ride from New Jersey to midtown and would further spur growth at the Hudson Yards area. The city paid Parsons Brinckerhoff $250,000 to conduct a feasibility study, and apparently, Bloomberg likes what he’s seen from the preliminary report.

Calling this subway extension “a heck of a lot better” than the ARC Tunnel, one source in the Bloomberg administration said things could move forward quickly. “This is a really good project,” the source told The Post. “The mayor wants this.” Whatever Mikey wants, Mikey gets.

The Post has more:

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing forward with a proposal to extend the No. 7 train to New Jersey and get the project locked in before he leaves City Hall in two years…Although noncommittal in public, Hizzoner is now a fan of the concept and is looking to announce the next planning steps in the coming months, sources said. Bloomberg would then be able to go public with a formal proposal by the end of 2012, in a bid to get the New Jersey-bound No. 7 tunnel on track by the close of his third term, Dec. 31, 2013…

The next steps in the process are a full business plan and environmental-impact study, which have not yet been commissioned. During his weekly radio appearance on WOR Friday, Bloomberg didn’t reveal his enthusiasm for the project, saying only, “If there’s money for it and it makes sense, I’d certainly support it.”

But yesterday, Bloomberg spokeswoman Julie Wood sounded a more optimistic note: “Since we began exploring this idea, we continue to think it has a lot of potential as a way to cost-effectively improve regional transportation and also create thousands of jobs.”

Officials in the Christie administration and the Port Authority are working with City Hall on the No. 7 concept, but insist that the mayor take the lead. Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said yesterday, “We have been intrigued all along by this as a potential alternative.”

The issues, of course, focus around the money. Where will anyone find $10 billion for the project? Would the Port Authority be involved in a cross-Hudson project that uses MTA services and rolling stock? What would New Jersey contribute? How would New York City fund such an expansion — and should the city even be looking at an out-of-state subway line when so many routes within the five boroughs could use the attention?

For their part, MTA officials were silent on the news. Speaking after the MTA Board meeting this morning, Transit president Thomas Prendergast didn’t offer up too much. “We have to see what results of the study are,” he said. “It would be premature to comment on it.”

Ultimately, as The Post notes, though, this move is all about Bloomberg’s legacy. Moving forward with such an ambitious project would cement his place in the annals of city history. He would be the mayor who delivered the subway to New Jersey. Yet, whether we need this subway extension, whether the dollars are there and whether they could be better spent remains to be seen.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.