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?

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

Updated (1:55 p.m. with Sen. Lautenberg’s reaction): Now that he doesn’t have to pony up much state money for a rail project, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has hopped aboard the 7 expansion plan. In an appearance yesterday on 101.5′s Millenium Radio, Christie endorsed New York City’s nascent plans to send the 7 to Secaucus and even pledged some New Jersey dollars to the project. “I think it’s a much better idea than the ARC,” he said, citing the supposed $5.3 billion price tag.

During the radio appearance, Christie spoke out against his detractors who claimed that his actions in killing the ARC Tunnel would lead to decades of stalled progress on a cross-Hudson rail tunnel. “They said nothing was going to be done for generations, nothing would happen, there’s no other way we could do this,” Christie said.

“Within weeks,” he continued, “we have New York City coming forward with an idea. You know why? Because it’s good for New York City. And once they knew that New Jersey wasn’t going to be the stooge that paid 70% of the cost of this project with no contribution from them, and they weren’t going to get that access of New Jerseyans going to New York, now they decide to step up and come forward with another idea.”

Of course, Christie is all in favor of a plan that doesn’t require his state to fund a project that, by and large, is a benefit to his constituents. If someone else is, as he put it in a similar context, willing to be “played for a patsy,” why not have them foot the bill and offer nominal political support and minimum economic aid?

Christie, who bashed N.J. Sen. Frank Lautenberg for his ARC support, wanted to hear capitulation from his political foe but got only a perfunctory statement. Said New Jersey’s federal representative via a statement, “The senator strongly supports expanding rail across the Hudson River and is closely examining the 7 line proposal.”

Lautenberg calls for firm fiscal support

In a letter sent today from Lautenberg to Gov. Christie, the New Jersey Senator urged the governor to pledge New Jersey dollars to the project. Noting that he’ll continue to fight for federal dollars, Lautenberg writes, in part:

While the No. 7 Subway proposal is not perfect — for example it does not offer New Jerseyans new direct rides to New York City from their local trains — it merits serious consideration…As I’m sure you’re well aware, before Federal transit funds can be sought for a new transit project, state and local funding sources need to be identified first. Under U.S.C. § 5309(d)(2)(C), the law governing Federal funding of new large transit projects, local financial commitments of funding must be identified before these projects are eligible for federal fudning. Therefore, please inform me of the amount and nature of New Jersey’s financial commitment to this project. Specifically, please verify that the $1.25 billion in New Jersey Turnpike Authority funding that was slated for the ARC Tunnel would be available for this new project.

I anticipate that you will aggressively seek comparable local commitments from New York City and/or State as well. Together with Federal resources, if local sources fo revenue are identified, an impressive financing package could be put together to make the No. 7 Subway proposal or another trans-Hudson crossing a reality.

I’ve posted the full letter after the jump, but it’s worth noting two aspects of it: First, it’s clear that Lautenberg and Christie have a chilly relationship at best. Second, if New Jersey ponies up some dough — and that’s a big “if” — and if Lautenberg can again secure federal financing for a cross-Hudson tunnel, this crazy 7-to-Secaucus idea just might have wings after all.

After the jump, the letter from Lautenberg to Christie in full. Read More→