Archive for East Side Access Project
Jan
29
Inside the East Side Access project
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Fifteen stories below street level, this space will hold one day hold four platforms and eight tracks 15 for the LIRR at Grand Central Terminal. (All photos courtesy of the MTA.)
As part of its increased presence on social media sites, the MTA has been sharing more information and more pictures of their ongoing projects with the public. Last night, via their MTA Insider Twitter account, the authority released some shots of the work in progress at the Grand Central end of the East Side Access project. For transit construction enthusiasts, these photos offer a glimpse of some good old fashioned digging. I’ve posted a few below, and the entire album is available on the MTA’s Facebook page. The Journal-News has profiled the ongoing work as well.
Once the location of Metro-North’s Madison Ave. train yard, this space will become a passenger concourse for the LIRR.
These workers, according to Metro, spend their days deep within the rocks below the city. The Manhattan schist proves a sturdy rock, and the Sandhogs say they are often joined in their work by hordes of rats.
Another view of the platform cavern.
This tunnel will, by 2016, be lined with tracks that will bring LIRR trains into Grand Central Terminal.
Jan
12
For East Side Access, a new Grand Central entrance
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A new entrance to the catacombs of Grand Central Terminal will open in Sept. 2011. (Rendering courtesy Metro-North)
In a sense, the East Side Access Project is New York City’s forgotten big construction effort. While the Second Ave. Subway construction is disrupting street traffic and residential life along the Upper East Side, the East Side Access work continues daily far below the surface of the city. Slowly, the benefits of this project will soon be coming online, and Metro-North announced yesterday the construction of a new entrance to Grand Central Terminal as part of the East Side Access work.
This new entrance, set to open in September 2011, will extend the Grand Central entrance options north to 47th St. The street-level access point will be on the side street between Lexington and Park Avenues in the building at 245 Park. The new entrance will feature an escalator from the street to the 47th St. cross passageway and a staircase from the street to the platform shaed by Tracks 11 and 13. Right now, the east end of the 47th St. cross passageway has no outlet.
“This new entrance will be a tremendous benefit to both current Metro-North customers and future LIRR customers by providing a fifth northern means of ingress and egress to the trains,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said in a statement.
“This entrance is an example of how construction can be staged so that customers can enjoy incremental benefits as each element of a project is completed,” MTA Capital Construction President Dr. Michael Horodniceanu said.
Currently, the 47th Street cross passage runs directly below street level from Lexington Avenue to Madison Avenue and has staircases that lead to every train platform on the upper level of Grand Central. From that passageway, commuters can use two walkways to reach the 45 St. cross passageway and connect to all lower level platforms. With these options, those who work north of Grand Central save, according to Metro-North, up to 15 minutes of walking time.
As crews work to build this new entry way, Tracks 11 and 13 at Grand Central will be out of service. The MTA must extend Track 13 south due to the loss of space to escalators and stairs on the northern end of the platform, and to keep a platform 10 cars long, a southern extension is necessary. Metro-North began this work yesterday, and it is due to cost $14 million over the next 20 months. When the East Side Access work is completed in 2016, the LIRR concourse will connect to the 47th St. passageway as well.
Sep
30
MTA awards last major East Side Access contract
Posted by: | CommentsAs the Second Ave. Subway battles problems and delays, the MTA’s East Side Access project is moving ahead mostly as scheduled. Yesterday, the MTA awarded a $659 million tunneling contract to a joint venture team of Granite Construction Inc., Traylor Bros. Inc. and Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc. The contract, according to the Associated Press, covers the “Queens Bored Tunnels and Structures for Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access project in New York. The work to be done on the project represents the last major link in the tunnels from Queens to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.”
Work on this tunnel is scheduled to take 42 months and will begin immediately. Reports the AP, “The companies will excavate and concrete line four bored tunnels beneath an active rail storage yard. The tunnels will total nearly two miles in length and about 22 feet in diameter. The work also includes excavating three emergency exit structures, underpinning existing bridges and demolishing various rail yard buildings.” Although it will not meet its original 2012 completion date, the East Side Access project remains on track for a 2015 opening.
May
11
East Side Access tunnel, idle for 30 years, ready to complete the journey
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The lower level of the 63rd St. tunnel will soon burrow its way to Grand Central Terminal. (Jacob Silberberg for The New York Times)
Alaska has its Bridge to Nowhere. New York, unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, has its Tunnel to Nowhere.
Built underneath the East River in the 1970s, the 63rd St. Tunnel is an artifact of the age of misguided optimism in New York City transportation history. At the time, the city administrations, finally crawling out from under the oppressive shadow cast by the Master Builder Robert Moses, wanted to get all of the public works in order that would actually help the city’s residents instead of the suburban drivers.
The 63rd Street Tunnel was supposed to connect Long Island City with Manhattan, but it sat dormant until 1989. The final connection — the F line as it is now with a stop at 63rd and Lexington, Roosevelt Island and 21st St.-Queesbridge to the IND Queens Boulevard Line — didn’t open until 2001. Optimism reigned so supreme in the 1970s that the 63rd St.-Lexington Ave. track patterns were designed to incorporate the Second Ave. Subway which was set for completion by the end of the 1970s. Hopefully, nearly 40 years later, the tracks will finally serve their intended purpose.
Meanwhile, the city built a second tunnel underneath the subway tunnels. This tunnel was originally intended to serve the LIRR into a stop at 48th Street and 3rd Ave. as well as a terminus for a proposed high-sped line to JFK Airport. Well, we all know how those plans turned out, and the second tunnel was abandoned with a dead end sitting in the Manhattan Schist leading literally nowhere.
Now, 30 years later, this second tunnel — the Tunnel to Nowhere — will finally go somewhere. Gone are the plans for a stop at 48th and 3rd and gone, sadly, are the plans for a high-speed raillink to JFK. Instead, we have the East Side Access project. And now, as The Times notes, the pieces are in place for the tunnel and this ambitious commuter rail extension. With a tunnel boring machine en route from Italy, soon work will start in earnest on this project.
Over the next few weeks, the parts will be hauled to Queens and carried through the 63rd Street tunnel under the East River, to a rock cavern about 140 feet below the corner of Second Avenue and 63rd Street in Manhattan. There, the machine will be assembled and, by the end of the year, it will begin chewing through the rock of Manhattan, headed for Grand Central Terminal…
Even today, the tunnel’s lower deck still leads nowhere. Built to carry Long Island Rail Road trains to the East Side of Manhattan, the tunnel’s lower portion was never connected to anything, and it has remained a dead-end anomaly, a testament to high aspirations and low finances.
When it begins its slow trip under Manhattan, grinding through the rock at the rate of about 50 feet a day, the 200-ton machine will travel southwest to Park Avenue and then south to Grand Central.
So there it is, and I love the phrasing in this article. “A testament to high aspirations and low finances,” indeed.
But now things are falling into place for ambitious subway projects. We’ll have boring machines making their way to Grand Central Terminal and others working down Second Avenue. Finally, New York City is getting its much-needed public transportation upgrades. Just don’t pay any attention to the finances as the federal government is picking up just 40 percent of the East Side Access project’s $6.3 billion price tag. That is the worry for another day.
For some great pictures inside the Tunnel to Nowhere, head on over to this post at AMNY’s Tracker blog.
Apr
10
Sunnyside residents worried about East Side Access impact
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Tunnels for the East Side Access project will run through the Sunnyside neighborhood in Queens. (Map courtesy of MTA Capital Construction)
Unhappy residents make poor political partners and, as the MTA is learning, excellent stories for journalists. While Second Ave. residents have expressed their collective dismay over a looming eviction, some New Yorkers across the East River aren’t too happy with the plans for the East Side Access project.
According to a story last week in the Queens Chronicle, Sunnyside residents are concerned that the increased rail traffic will mean a corresponding increase in noise for the neighborhood. Jennifer Manley of the Chronicle has more:
According to Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees familiar with the plans, two new sets of train tracks will be laid parallel to the LIRR main line, one to the north and one to the south. A loop track tunnel will also be built below ground to run empty trains to a new storage yard…
At the Sunnyside Towers, a six-story co-op building on Barnett Avenue, some upper-floor residents have learned to live with the rumble of passing trains, but are not pleased with the prospect of more. “When you live right here, you are getting the screech of metal hitting metal, and it’s sickening,” complained Ayne Horyn, who lives on the fourth floor…Estimates are that train activity could increase between 30 percent and 50 percent, with an additional 24 trains a day, and as many as 19 more trains during peak hours.
While some residents are working with MTA on noise-dampening solutions, others are resigned to the fact that these transportation upgrades will bring a decrease in the quality of life for some Queens dwellers.
It’s been a rough week for the MTA and its public relations image. The Second Ave. residents are garnering sympathy because no one thought this subway line would actually end up a reality. And while Queens residents will soon have their chance to air their concerns with MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander, an air of inevitability permeates these capital construction projects. Once the money starts flowing and the wheels start turning, it’s tough to stem that impending tide.
