For better or worse, the next great frontier for the New York City subway system will open in the December of 2013. That is, of course, the one-stop 7 line extension down to 34th St. and 11th Ave. with tail tracks extending southward to the mid-20s and no station stop at 41st and 10th Ave. Still, it could be worse: The MTA has left some space for a future station at 41st St. if the money were to materialize.

Recently, the MTA’s photographer Patrick Cashin took us underground, and today, New York 1 talks with MTA Capital Construction head Michael Horodniceanu about the state of the 7 line. Tina Redwine reports:

MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu said after three years, the heavy construction phase is ending. “Pretty soon, trains will come and move people here. So it’s quite exciting,” said Horodniceanu.

The station mezzanine for the subway stop can be made out, and the shells of the two tunnels that run along 11th Avenue and connect to the existing 7 line are now complete…Contractors are building the platform that will go between the two tracks. To do this, they put down metal forms into which they will pour concrete. They will create a surface for the subway to run on through the tunnels…

Horodniceanu said the next phase are the finishes — tracks, signals and station fixtures. “If you ever did a kitchen, they bring the cabinets, but the finishes count,” said Horodniceanu. “Here is the same thing. The concrete, the walls are in place, but to get the finishes right takes time.”

In speaking with NY1, Horodniceanu let slip a telling statement about the project. “So we’ve ‘conquered the West.’ We’ve found no gold yet, but maybe the gold will be in the real estate,” he said. Of course, the gold is in the real estate. That is, after all, why the city is funding this $2.1 billion extension to undeveloped territories. Bloomberg knows it can spur development for Manhattan’s last frontier, and even if Related Companies has no idea when its dreams for the Hudson Yards will be realized, the subway will be waiting.

Meanwhile, a rapidly growing area with actual buildings and many people who need better transit access has been the focal point of controversy. The city forced the MTA to drop plans for a station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. when costs soared, and over the years, both a station shell that would allowed for easy future expansion and later a study to assess the feasibility of a post-build station addition were rejected by the city and Congress respectively.

Now, though, Horodniceanu, according to NY1, said that “the MTA has left space for the station, should the half-billion dollars it would cost somehow turn up.” It’s unclear exactly what that means or whether the station would be configured with side platforms or an island, but this tidbit of news offers up a faint glimmer of hope that one day, this mistake can be corrected. It’s doubtful that the dollars will materialized, and New York City is full of subway provisions that were never realized. Yet, we can dream.

Photo: A glimpse inside the 7 line extension. (By Patrick Cashin/MTA)

Photo by Patrick Cashin/MTA

It’s a pretty good gig being the MTA’s official photographer. After taking us into Fulton St. yesterday, today, Patrick Cashin toted his camera down into the 7 line extension to snap some shots of the city’s newest subway expansion project. The one-stop extension to 34th St. and 11th Ave. is set to open in around 30 months, and work is progressing quickly.

The shots from inside the project are stunning. Above, workers are laying the foundation for what will eventually be the track bed. Cashin also provides some great shots of the station cavern (1, 2). I can’t quite figure out what this one is, but that’s quite a curve. I’ve embedded the rest of the photos as a slide show after the jump.

For the MTA, the 7 line extension will be the first new segment of subway to open since 2000 when the 63rd St. tunnel finally connected through to the rest of the Queens Boulevard line, but it is not without its own controversy. The city, which is footing the bill for this extension, opted to torpedo a badly-needed station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. when costs grew too high, and the MTA didn’t have the money for it either. The feds then failed to fund a study that would have assessed the feasibility of building out a station after the extension is complete, and no provisioning for future work there has been built into the project. Only in New York can a subway extension completely fail in such spectacular fashion. At least the Far West Side will finally have transit access though.

After the jump, a full set of photos from Patrick Cashin. Read More→

While we’ve heard a lot about the folks on the Upper East Side who are living amidst subway construction, stories of those impacted by the 7 line work are few and far better. In its “NY1 For You” report this week, though, the local news station highlighted a couple who have been dealing with the noise since they moved in May. The story though is hardly a sympathetic one.

Renters Anjanette Clisura and Dominic Sinesio moved from California in the beginning of May into the new MiMA building on 42nd Street, but not before asking about the huge construction site right outside their window. “They said that the MTA was doing the 7 line extension but don’t worry everything stops at 6 o’clock,” Clisura said. It didn’t take long for these renters to realize that wasn’t the case. “I’ve hardly slept for 16 nights,” Clisura said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s construction company has a 24-hour work permit which was issued in November. NY1 contacted the MTA and a spokesman told us the need for overnight work should gradually subside and end at some point in the fall…[A spokeswoman] told us that their realtors only represent to residents the hours of construction they control. She says they can’t speak to adjacent projects.

So essentially, a couple moved into an apartment above a long-term construction site, were reportedly lied to by their rental agent and now are finding that subway work is indeed disruptive. I certainly am sympathetic toward the plight of those who have been living amidst organized (or disorganized) chaos along Second Ave., but people who move into construction areas without adequately preparing themselves for the experience aren’t the types of sob stories over which I shed too many tears.

As we while away this sunny and warm Friday, eagerly looking forward to the weekend, take a few minutes of your day to check out the latest from the MTA’s YouTube account. In this clip, we see just how much progress has been made on the 7 line extension, and it’s pretty stunning to see just how far along the project is. Tunnel walls are being finished; the cavern at 34th St. and 11th Ave. is beginning to resemble a station.

The extension, part of the mayor’s plan to develop the Far West Side, is still on pace for revenue service by the end of 2013. Unfortunately, due to budget wrangling, the plans for a second stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St. had to be scrapped, and the MTA and city were unable to find the funds for even a shell station which would have made future expansion easier. Even as we gawk at the infrastructure work going on underground, I fear that we will regret the short-term budget decisions made without truly considering the long-term ramifications.

Work on the 7 line extension is moving quickly, but the same cannot be said of development at Hudson Yards. Photo by Photo by Clayton Price for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Over the past four and a half years, I haven’t smiled upon the 7 line extension. A pet project of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s that serves as a living relic of the city’s failed Olympics bid, the $2.1 billion extension has seen useful elements — such as a station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. — eliminated. While the new stop at 34th St. and 11th Ave. is one that will benefit an eventual neighborhood, at a time when subway expansion dollars are very limited, this Subway to Nowhere isn’t the best use of funds.

Yet, the project is, as we learned recently, moving forward. Just last week, the MTA unveiled photos from inside the station cavern, and the authority has maintained that the 7 will head to the Far West Side by December 2013, nearly 32 months from now.

Unfortunately, nothing will be there when the 7 train extension opens. Sure, the Javits Center will still host conventions and the few people who live and work in the undeveloped area will have quicker access to the rest of Manhattan. But Related Companies, the real estate developer who agreed to purchase the land above the rail yards from the MTA, doesn’t anticipate opening a building there until 2015 at the earliest. Things, though, may be moving forward on that front.

According to article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Related is attempting to convince Time Warner to anchor the Hudson Yards development. Apparently, Time Warner’s still-new corporate headquarters above Columbus Circle could now command such a high price that it would make more sense for the telecom giant to sell its space and move west. While talks, according to the Journal, “could fizzle,” Time Warner wants to move but “isn’t close to a decision.”

Eliot Brown and Lauren Schuker report:

If Time Warner makes the jump, it could finally open up a long-planned frontier in Manhattan development by the Javits Center. Related has been pushing a long-term plan to deliver a city-within-a-city to be built over the Long Island Rail Road storage yard. It’s slated to include 12.9 million square feet of new office, retail and residential development

The deal would be a major boost for Related Chairman Stephen Ross, who agreed in 2008 to a $1 billion long-term lease with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to become the site’s developer. Related has said it needs a large tenant to begin construction and has pledged to make space available to the first tenants at the cost of development…

Time Inc. and HBO, both divisions of Time Warner, lease more than two million square feet of space in Manhattan that expires in 2017 and 2018, according to research firm CoStar Group Inc. It is unclear if those divisions would be part of a move to Hudson Yards. But the timing of the lease expirations would allow for it. Related has said it could deliver the first phase of the development by 2015.

The two reporters note that Related has yet to secure a tenant for its planned buildings but believes it will lease out around 3.5 million square feet this year. The company is targeting Coach as a potential anchor tenant as well.

Meanwhile, the subway moves forward. Optimistically, construction will be completed at least two years before the buildings start to grow above the rail yards that abut the Hudson River, but the Subway to Nowhere will go west nonetheless.

Progress of station cavern construction for No. 7 Extension as of April 2011. Photo by Clayton Price for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

As progress underneath the Far West Side proceeds apace, the MTA sent its photographer Clayton Price underground to snap some photos of the 7 line extension. The photos focus on the excavation of a three-block-long station cavern at 34th St. and 11th Ave. that is 85 percent finished and on target for a September 2012 completion date.

As the extension stretches toward its December 2013 revenue service date, the MTA’s contractors have completed the concrete pours that create the main cavern arches. A systems contract, which will cover rail track, all mechanical, electrical and related systems throughout the tunnels, station, ventilation buildings and the main subway entrance at 34th Street, will be awarded this July. This is the final contract for 7 line extension as the secondary station entrance is, in the words of the MTA, “not necessary” for the 7 to start serving the Hudson Yards area.

Unfortunately, the station at 41st and 10th Ave. seems to be a lost cause right now. It’s no longer part of the dialogue and attempts to secure funding for a feasibility study failed. While this one-stop, $2.1-billion extension will bring subway service to an area of the city badly in need of it, failing to include that other station near Hell’s Kitchen will go down in city history as yet another missed transit opportunity.

For more photos from the station cavern, check out the MTA’s flickr photoset.

A rough sketch of the proposed 7 line extension to Secaucus. (Via The Wall Street Journal)

As the city’s plan to extend the 7 line to Secaucus gains support from the real estate lobby and, nominally, from N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, this far-fetched idea has stayed in the news for a few weeks. As intriguing as a cross-Hudson subway tunnel would be, the dollars aren’t there yet. Whether they ever will be remains to be seen, and many in the outer boroughs would rather see spending on underserved areas of New York City before the subway crosses state lines.

Today, The Times, which first broke the story nearly two weeks ago, has some reader feedback in the form of letters to the editor on Bloomberg’s plan. Let’s see what people are saying.

The first letter comes from Spero T. Leakas, a New Jersey lawyer. He writes:

Considering that Manhattan is the commercial hub of New York City and the metropolitan region, why would the subway system extend 20 or so miles east of the region’s center into Queens but not extend at all west?

From a transportation perspective, the region is currently a very unbalanced scale, and I am very happy to see that this is seriously being discussed.

Municipal or state boundaries are no excuse for not uniting a region’s populated areas into one cohesive transportation system. Under the proposal, the areas of Hudson County, New Jersey, are certainly worthy of having the No. 7 line.

Bob Previdi, a former planner with Transit, supports the measure from a transportation point of view. “The line,” he says, “should either continue on to Newark, where it can link to passengers from the Morris and Essex and Raritan Valley lines, and Newark Liberty Airport as well, or the tunnel should go to Hoboken. Hoboken is closer than Secaucus and is the second major hub for New Jersey Transit service.”

Michael Rogovin, another former Transit planner, says the 7 line extension idea is “deeply flawed.” He writes:

Trains bringing commuters from Queens already discharge huge crowds into stations at Grand Central, Fifth Avenue and Times Square, beyond the capacity of these stations to efficiently handle the volume of people. The extension of the No. 7 train to the West Side that is already under construction will add to these crowds.

Adding thousands of New Jersey commuters to the same narrow platforms and limited stairs, ramps and escalators (with little or no chance of expansion at these stations), would create unbearable crowding and a safety nightmare.

Rogovin believes increasing capacity at Penn Station should remain the primary objective for any cross-Hudson rail tunnel. Using the subways to achieve the ends of the now-deceased ARC Tunnel should be a last resort only.

Right now, there’s no firm proposal for the 7 to head to Secaucus, and the money isn’t in place. But if it keeps people talking about ways to solve a problem, perhaps it can become a real possibility for increasing trans-Hudson rail capacity.

By eliminating the station at 41st St. and 10th Ave., the city ensured that the 7 line extension would come in at budget.

With the Mayor’s proposed subway to Secaucus garnering headlines, the 7 line extension is back in the news again. This $2.1-billion capital plan, whose construction is funded entirely by the city but whose rolling stock is not, has progressed largely under the radar as it heads toward its late 2013 completion. Sure, the city and MTA never came to terms on a station at 10th Ave. and 41st St., but at least it’s moving forward trouble-free.

That, at least, is the narrative Eliot Brown at Capital New York puts forward in a piece that explores how the 7 train is winning. Unlike the Fulton St. transit hub debacle and long-aborning Second Ave. Subway, the 7 line extension is ostensibly on time and on budget. This potential “bargain-basement gateway to Secaucus,” as Brown calls it, has emerged as the city’s model in subway construction. He writes:

Whatever happens to the long-shot bid for the new Hudson River connector, the No. 7 extension is still within its $2.1 billion original budget and its physical progress is going swimmingly, in the context an industry where cost overruns routinely go into the billions. It also stands in stark contrast with another historic transportation project, and he only other subway extension to be undertaken by the city in the past half-century: the Second Avenue Subway.

The Second Avenue project has not gone as planned. Since ground broke in April 2007, its completion date has been pushed off repeatedly (an average of a year each year), back from 2013 to 2016 (and counting), with the budget growing from $3.8 billion to at least $4.4 billion…

The No. 7’s easy ride can be attributed to a variety of factors, one of which certainly is luck—the tunneling simply went faster than expected—and another of which is the benefit of doing a project in what is effectively the Wild West. The area is filled with low-rise warehouses and garages, not residential skyscrapers filled with vocal residents and merchants who deplore the proliferation of rats and other noxious side effects of construction. There is less of a jumble of infrastructure underground to contend with, and, with only one station, there are fewer surprises than on the three-stop Second Ave line.

But is this fawning over subway construction true? Because the 7 line is going to open what Brown terms the Wild West of Manhattan, it has escaped the same level of scrutiny to which news organizations and politicians have subjected the Second Ave. Subway. Little outrage has emerged over plans to cancel the station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. — a station that would have brought badly-needed subway service to the rapidly growing and currently underserved Hells Kitchen area. That alone is why the 7 line extension, originally budgeted for $1.9 billion, doesn’t cost $3 billion, and not fiscal control by the Bloomberg Administration, as Capital New York alleges.

In a report issued in late 2009, the Citizens Budget Commission laid bare the truth about MTA capital projects. The 7 line extension, noted the report, was first due to open in summer 2012 to coincide with the Olympics. Delays in the design phase have since pushed the revenue-service opening date back to June 2013, and the entire project won’t be completed until November 2014.

Perhaps I’m just arguing a technicality. Perhaps Brown is right to highlight the 7 line extension because it’s more of a model for future subway expansion than the delay-rife Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway. Perhaps progress is indeed “going swimmingly.” But I see a project in which the costs were controlled by scaling back the scope by half, and the timeline, while not suffering recent delays, is still a year or two off its original pace. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the theater?