As the Bishop-approved 7 line extension marches inevitably toward a 2013 completion, questions about the project continue to swirl. The City and MTA are at an impasse over the funding for a planned station at 10th and 41st St., and with the Hudson Yards project decades away from reality, this West Side extension will serve an area rich in space and poor in actual riders for some time.

Today, as the city comes to terms with the compromise transit package soon to be pass in Albany, the fate of the 7 line may again be at a turning point. According to The Daily News and some leading transit advocates, aspects of the 7 line extension — including the purchasing of new cars — are not high on the MTA’s priority list. As such, the new station at 34th and 11th Ave. will exist and serve whatever is in the area, but the MTA may not have the money for new cars to adequate service the entire line.

Pete Donohue has more:

Straphangers could wind up with an extended No. 7 subway line – but not more frequent train service – if the MTA has to adopt a leaner capital plan, experts said.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have envisioned a 2010-2014 capital construction and maintenance program in the range of $25 billion to $30 billion. But transit managers will have to cancel or delay some big-ticket items if Albany doesn’t provide enough funding to pay such a large tab.

Buying additional subway cars to expand the No. 7 line fleet is one move that could be shelved, according to Bob Yaro of the Regional Plan Association. “You would be spending billions of dollars on the No. 7 line extension, but without the additional cars, you wouldn’t be able to handle an increase in ridership,” Yaro said.

Donohue notes that on the MTA’s prioritized list of capital projects, the 7 line extension is in the third tier. The agency would first like to complete the installation of new tracking, the upgrading of power and tunnel exhaust systems and an overhaul of their old buses. The second tier contains the expansion projects for the East Side, and the third tier, for now, features future legs of the Second Ave. Subway, money for a 21st century communications and signal system and the 7 line car purchases.

We could debate the wisdom in that allocation for a while. I’d argue that a communications and signal system should probably be prioritized in the first tier, but the logistic behind that project are substantial.

Maybe in the end, the state delivers the money, and the MTA can go ahead will all three tiers of its capital program. For now, though, the 7 line extension remains a troubled project, a victim of inter-agency fighting and competing agency aims. To build it without the added capacity would be a disservice to hundreds of thousands of Queens commuters.

MTA workers oversee the 100-ton Tunnel Boring Machine on Thursday morning as Mayor Bloomberg and transit officials look on. (Photo courtesy of the MTA)

In a little while, I’ll get to this piece of bad news. But while the state legislature was busy ignoring the MTA’s needs, the transit agency and the city were looking forward to a new era of construction and subway expansion. Thursday was, then, a day of both progress and regression on the NYC transit front.

Early on Thursday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and MTA officials gathered at 11th Ave. and 25th St. to celebrate the lowering of one of the two tunnel-boring machines for the 7 line extension. These machines will work their ways north from this spot on the far west side of Chelsea past the eventual Hudson Yards area and then eastward along 41st St. until meeting up with the existing 7 tubes near Times Square. The extension, according to the MTA, will open in 2013.

Along the way, a piece of subway history will vanish though. A vacant platform on the long-shuttered lower level at the 8th Ave. A/C/E stop at 42nd St. will soon meets it doom as the 7 stretches westward. NYCSubway.org has some dramatic images of the destruction of the platform that has been closed since 1981.

Above ground, the politicians and MTA officials were, of course, in a celebratory mood. “Today, we’re beginning the next and most dramatic phase of the extension of the 7 subway line,” Bloomberg said. “By digging these tunnels, we are expanding our subway network into an entirely new area of the City: Manhattan’s Far West Side. It’s these major, long-term investments in infrastructure that will transform areas full of promise into neighborhoods full of residents, park-goers, office workers and shoppers.”

MTA Executive Director and CEO Elliot Sander used the opportunity to stress what the MTA, with money, can accomplish. “As we prepare our next Capital Plan, this project shows that with stable funding in place, we can build monumental works that will serve generations of New Yorkers,” Sander said. “We are deeply grateful for Mayor Bloomberg’s steadfast commitment to this project, and we appreciate and share his understanding of the important role that transportation will play in catalyzing the development of the Far West Side.”

While this optimism is not misplaced, the event and the release about it had the air of perhaps too much enthusiasm. In discussing the city-funded $2.1-billion extension of the 7 line, the MTA press release noted how this project will “help transform the Hudson Yards vicinity into a vibrant 24-hour neighborhood, containing a mix of commercial, residential, retail, open space and recreational uses.” Right now, though, the MTA has yet to sign a deal with Related, and odds are good that when this subway extension opens, development on the Hudson Yards land will be in the nascent stages. The city should build this line to encourage growth in underdeveloped areas of the city, but a completed Hudson Yards project is a long way off.

Furthermore, while these TBMs will dig past 41st St. and 10th Ave., plans for that station have been shelved. Until and unless the MTA and the city can come to an agreement, the two stubborn governing bodies will forego the best chance they have to build a station at a spot that needs one.

Meanwhile, the MTA has released the various technical details for all the TBM fans among us. It will take two months to assembly these machines. The first will be ready to dig in April and the second in May. These machines will dig under a large number of preexisting tunnels including the 8th Ave. line, the Amtrak tunnels near Penn Station and the Lincoln Tunnel tubes. The TBM excavation will wrap up next spring.

While the MTA remains in economic limbo, this is an important milestone for the transit agency. While a new station at South Ferry along with Phase I of the SAS and this 7 line extension may seem modest, this is the largest expansion of the subway system most New Yorkers have witnessed in their lives. Hopefully, this potential for progress won’t be dashed by the shortsightedness of our elected representatives.

For more gory details on the TBM, click through.

The 7 line stop at 41st St. and 10th Ave. may be saved by the stimulus.

Before the weekend, we learned that the national stimulus plan would finally deliver a transit hub for Fulton Street. In fact, the stimulus may save another faulty MTA Capital Construction program from a giant budgetary mistake.

In the comments to that Fulton-inspired post, SAS reader Kris Datta dropped in a note about the 7 line extension. “I understand some of this stimulus money is also being used to fund the 10th Ave. station on the 7 line extension,” he writes.

To recap, the 7 line extension is a city-funded project that extends the 7 line from Times Square west along 41st St. and then south along 11th Ave. to 34th St. The planned development at Hudson Yards spurred on the city investment in this project, and while talks for the Yards are scheduled for Monday, it is resting on unstable ground.

When the city and the MTA agreed on the extension deal, the city promised to pay for the project up to a certain point and not more. The MTA wouldn’t take on cost overruns for a project that doesn’t benefit too many people and serves simply to fatten the wallet of whatever real estate companies winds up with the Hudson Yards lands. With costs on the rise, the MTA couldn’t promise to build the station stop at 41st St. and 10th Ave., and it seemed that the city would be investing a few billion dollars in a subway extension to nowhere when other, more necessary projects — such as the LIRR East Side Access and Second Ave. Subway — tottered along.

But now it sounds like the government’s infusion of cash will save another station. I’ll try to nail down a list of the MTA’s planned stimulus projects this year, but restoring this station seems to make a lot of sense. The MTA can start spending this cash on a construction project nearly immediately, and it will have long- and short-term benefits for the economy.

As much as this 7 line extension isn’t a necessary plan in ways other extension proposals are, omitting a stop at 41st and 10th would have been an insult to the neighborhood. The Hell’s Kitchen area needs more transit options, and while it’s true that the area is already developed, that shouldn’t preclude subway access.

In the end, though, the MTA can’t always rely on stimulus money for proper project funding. The authority has a whole bunch of plans in the works to expand and enhance subway service throughout the city, but these plans are plagued with high price tags. It’s great that the government’s efforts to kick start the economy will benefit the city, but one day soon, the state, the city and the MTA will have to find a more permanent solution to this capital funding problem.

The Tenth Ave. station is no longer.

The MTA has scraped plans to build a station stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St. as part of the 7 line extension to the Hudson Yards area. Let’s not mince words: This is a terrible mistake.

NY1 has the story:

Transit officials dropped plans to build an additional 7 subway line station Thursday. Officials eliminated the plan to build a station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street when they were unable to obtain the $450 million to complete the project.

The Bloomberg administration said a station is not necessary since the neighborhood is already developed…

In a statement, the MTA said, “While we would prefer to include a station at 10th Avenue, it is not critical to the success of the overall project. If funding is identified at a later date we will revisit the issue.”

I have long advocated for the inclusion of this station in the final project. If the city is going to spend the time and energy expanding west, they should be as inclusive as possible. To omit this station now would be to give up on it forever. Just ask proponents of the Second System.

On many levels, this news is dismaying. First is Bloomberg’s dismissal of the station because the neighborhood is already developed. The purpose of subway expansion isn’t to spur on to development but rather to offer public transportation to neighborhoods currently lacking in that regard. The area west of 8th Ave. in Hells Kitchen needed this station. Drawing Bloomberg’s logic to a proper end would result in our questioning the need for a Second Ave. Subway too. After all, the Upper East side is “already developed.”

More alarming is the cost of this project and its ultimate result. The City and the MTA will now be spending a few billion dollars to extend the subway one stop. At a time when the system is falling apart, when maintenance projects are being deferred, when expansion plans are slowly crawling to a halt, spending billions of dollars simply to placate some real estate developer in charge of a project at least a decade away from completion doesn’t strike me as the best use of funds.

Update 3:00 p.m.: CityRoom has a more detailed story up about this news. This William Neuman piece features a statement from Senator Chuck Schumer: “Failure to build a full 7 train extension is a huge missed opportunity to promptly realize the complete potential of the Far West Side.”

Well said, Chuck. Well Said.