Work continues below ground along Second Ave., but is the SAS a true megaproject? (Source: MTA Presentation to CB8, Nov. 30, 2009)

The Second Ave. Subway is not a megaproject. Phase I, the current line under construction, is a 30-block extension of a preexisting subway line that will cost nearly $4.5 billion and take nearly a decade of continual construction to complete. Then, the MTA will have to go back to the drawing board to fund and build Phases II, III and IV. Maybe by the mid-2020s, a subway line will span the entire north-south reach of Second Ave.

For the residents of Second Ave., local subway construction is a nuisance. Station entrances and unsightly ventilation structures make this project seem larger than it is, and a walk along Second Ave. does nothing to dispel the notion that building even part of a subway line is a major undertaking. Yet, the initial investment is small compared to true megaprojects, and the piecemeal approach makes for a project of good size in New York City. That, though, is because the city no longer builds much on a grand scale. Do we actually miss Robert Moses? Do we need someone to wield Moses-like power? Or are we doomed to a century of big-but-mega projects that run over budget and take to long to complete?

In The Times this weekend, Louis Uchitelle explored the end of the megaproject in the United States. With the Big Dig finished, no one is building a truly massive public work. As rapid transit goes, streetcars are the wave of the future. Elsewhere, the Metro in Washington, D.C., finished up earlier this decade, and the last major BART expansion in the Bay Area wrapped in 1997. Uchitelle — who notes that construction along Second Ave. “proceeds unhurriedly” — views this dearth of megaprojects through the prism of the economy:

So what are we missing, exactly? Huge public works — or more precisely, their historic absence — didn’t cause the recession any more than their renewal would quickly draw the country out of it. But their effect on the economy is almost always noticeable if not easily measured. Some economists argue that the continual construction of new megaprojects adds a quarter of a percentage point or more, on average, to the gross domestic product over the long term. Again, cause and effect aren’t clear, but the strongest periods of economic growth in America have generally coincided with big outlays for new public works and the transformations they bring once completed.

If their absence creates a void, particularly in a recession, what can fill it?

His answer is a stimulus focused around megaprojects. He sees a country with high-speed rail stretching from coast to coast and with cities building again. Jebediah Reed at the Infrastructurist is pondered this very question. Why hasn’t America, without a Moses to dictate and bulldoze, to unnecessarily plow over homes, parks and neighborhoods, learned to build megaprojects? New York, in particular, is afraid of putting too much development power in the hands of one person. As the response to the Empire State Development Corporation shows, nearly fifty years after Moses’ reign of terror ended, we as a city still do not trust those who seek to build unilaterally.

But on the Upper East Side, though, we see the extreme response to decades of Moses’ centralized power. We see a project that might suffer from too much community involvement and definitely suffers from a lack of political leadership. Even Phase I, a rather meek northward extension of the Q line, still needs $1.5 billion in funding, and most New Yorkers think that it will open when it opens whenever that might be.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the original IRT line opened in just four and a half years. The city might have been far emptier and less built up than it is today, but things got done. What has happened to those great megaprojects and the drive and political will to build them?

With subway construction come neighborhood gripes. As the Second Ave. Subway continues what one reporter recently termed its “unhurried pace” toward completion, residents along Second Ave. are learning that life with subway construction and life with an eventual subway line isn’t as rosy as it first sounds. Today, we will explore two stories about life on the East Side and the real estate problems presented by the Second Ave. Subway. Part I, I examined the eight ventilation structures soon to appear on the Upper East Side. Part two focuses on station entrances.

The planned entrance at 72nd St. is one of two that have come under community fire. (All images via the SAS Task Force report to CB 8. PDF file from Oct. 28, 2008. Click to enlarge.)

When planning a transit route, the entrance points can be quite vital to the way a neighborhood forms or responds to new stations, and a trip through New York’s subways show no uniformity in exit points. Some are in the front of trains; others in back; still others in the middle. Still other stations have entrances in both the front and the back or at two mid-way points along the platform.

For the Second Ave. Subway, the MTA has tried to maximize the area served by one station. All of the new stations will include two entrances — one in the front and one in the back. For instance, the 72nd St. stop, seen above, will allow straphangers to enter at 69th St. or 72nd St., thus minimizing the walking distance for subway-bound pedestrians.

Yet, despite these conveniences, some Upper East Side residents weren’t happy with the MTA’s design process and the lack of community input during the initial planning stages. All’s well that ends well for these Co-Op Boards though, and as Habitat Magazine detailed, the MTA was willing to work with community groups to respond to resident complaints. Bill Morris tells the story:

The original plan called for two entrances where a reasonable person might expect to find them – at the northeast and northwest corners of Second Avenue and 72nd Street. But in fall 2007, the MTA decided to move the northeast-corner entrance to the middle of the block on the north side of East 72nd Street, between First and Second Avenues. Not only that, the MTA proposed two mid-block entrances pro-tected by soaring glass canopies. That got the neighborhood’s attention.

“We accepted that there was going to be a subway stop at Second Avenue,” says Valerie Mason, vice president of the co-op board at 320 East 72nd Street, a 40-unit building erected in the late 1920s. “Then, literally overnight, the station entrances were moved from the corner to the middle of the block. They looked like two huge soccer goals. The MTA said they had encountered some problems at the corner. What I saw was an attractive nuisance and a safety hazard.”

…Phyllis Weisberg, a partner at the law firm of Kurzman Karelsen & Frank, filed a lawsuit in state court on behalf of the co-ops at 320 and 340 East 72nd Street. Two co-ops across the street filed a similar suit in federal court. “The basis for the lawsuits was that under state and federal law, certain environmental impact studies have to be done and public hearings have to be held,” Weisberg says. “Five days after the [2007] public hearing, the MTA said they were moving the entrance. They did that without studies or a public hear-ing.”

As momentum grew, neighborhood efforts coalesced into a successful lobbying effort. Residents made their concerns heard at Community Board meetings with MTA officials and in correspondence with City Council members. In the end, the MTA’s Supplemental Environmental Assessment to the Second Avenue Subway Final Environmental Impact Statement, available here in full, focused around the original corner exits on 72nd St. The neighbors had made their concerns — design and safety worries and not NIMBY protectionism — heard, and the authority responded in turn.

At 86th St., the residents are waging a similar fight but with less organization. The MTA hasn’t yet determined the location of the entrance at the northern end of 86th St. It had been originally planned to include within the building at 305 E. 86th St. but has proposed moving it to the north side of 86th St. east of Second Ave. The federal government has found no significant environmental impact in this change, but residents are protesting.

No decision has been reached on that entrance yet, and the MTA is open to neighborhood imput. Only time will tell if the residents at 86th St. can find common ground as those at 72nd St. did.

With subway construction come neighborhood gripes. As the Second Ave. Subway continues what one reporter recently termed its “unhurried pace” toward completion, residents along Second Ave. are learning that life with subway construction and life with an eventual subway line isn’t as rosy as it first sounds. Today, we will explore two stories about life on the East Side and the real estate problems presented by the Second Ave. Subway. Please note that for all images, click to enlarge.

We start at the corner of 2nd Ave. and 97th St. with a ventilation shaft pictured above. It’s big; it’s ugly; it’s windowless; it will lead to the eviction of some residents and businesses; and the people who live near it are not happy. Can you blame them? Look at the thing.

Of course, it serves a functional purpose as well. Around the city, various properties are mysteriously vacant. There’s an old building on 96th St. between West End and Broadway used by the MTA, and the Greenwich Village substation is an obvious. The Second Ave. Subway, though, will feature something new. A train line for the 21st Century, the SAS will no longer subject straphangers to hot and sticky platforms. Instead, glass walls will keep out the heat and allow for air conditioning to maintain a semblance of normalcy in underground temperatures.

Of course, with air conditioning comes the need for ventilation, and the MTA plans to build eight of these ventilation shafts of various shapes and sizes along the current 34-block stretch that makes up Phase I of this subway line. Yesterday, The Real Deal explored residents’ reactions to these neighborhood eyesores. Some of these buildings, reports Sarah Ryley, are going to be up to nine stories high, and while others fit into the neighborhood, most stick out like sore thumbs.

Stanford Eckstut, an architect who helped PATH design its ventilation shafts, called the MTA’s versions behemoths with facades resembling “an improved parking garage.” He said, “These are buildings that are going to last forever; they should be contributing to the street scene. They should not just be a wrapping to hide mechanical things.”

Thomas Nobel, a co-op owner at 69th St. which, according to Ryley, is next to the largest of the structures, bemoaned them too. “It’s going to be a real detriment to the neighborhood,” he said. The MTA has yet to release renderings of the planned nine-story ventilation shaft for the 69th St. spot.

Still, Ryley continues, most Upper East Siders are willing to pay the cost:

Some Upper East Side residents are wary of locking horns with the MTA, fearing that a protracted legal battle would delay or kill the subway project. Instead — through elected officials, civic groups and the law firm Herrick Feinstein — they have attempted, with some success, to negotiate behind the scenes.

“People in the Upper East Side want this subway. When it’s finished, all in all, it’s going to be a great boon to the neighborhood,” said Noble, who is also an architect. “I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to have the process grind to a halt yet again.”

The fact that the structures need to be built is nonnegotiable — they are needed to house utilities, smoke evacuation systems and emergency exits, said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz, noting that sidewalk grates now violate the city’s building code.

And indeed, as Ryley reports, the MTA has been very willing to negotiate on height. Some groups have gotten 50 percent reductions in the heights of these ventilation shafts, and the MTA that the renderings which I present below are simply plans. Nothing is set in stone, and there is still plenty of time for the MTA and the Upper East Side to work together to build community-friendly structures that don’t overwhelm the sidewalks.

In the end, some residents are concerned about property values, and one real estate assessor says these people have reason to be. He claims the few properties directly abutting these structures could see a decrease in value, but that overall, property values on the Upper East Side should increase by 15 percent due to the added convenience of a nearby subway line. That’s a trade off most should be willing to make.

After the jump, more images of the planned ventilation shaft. All are courtesy of the MTA. Click to enlarge. Read More→

Earlier today, I appeared on a story on Marketplace about the Second Ave. Subway and subway construction in general during tough economic times. You can listen to the story via the player at right or you can find it online right here. Jeremy Hobson and I spoke at length about the economics behind the Second Ave. Subway and the ongoing construction on the East Side, and his story explores why this economic downturn hasn’t yet killed the Second Ave. Subway as the downturn in the 1970s did.

To summarize my thoughts briefly, the issue comes down to both the politics and mechanisms of the current funding. Much of the money for the project was secured before the economy went south, and the federal dollars are specifically earmarked for the Second Ave. Subway construction. In the 1950s, the transit agency could siphon funds away from the project to invest in other areas of maintenance while in the 1970s, the costs were funded through a scheme that resembled a pay-as-you-go structure. The Feds ensured that the money would be there this time around, and the MTA can continue to work through a bad economy.

Additionally, the Second Ave. Subway, while not a stimulus-funded project, acts as one anyway. By continuing work, the MTA continues to employ contractors and construction crews. Constant investment in this decade-long project creates constant jobs, and to kill it now would be politically ugly and economically unwise.

In the end, as I said to Hobson, I am uncertain of the future of Phases III and IV of the Second Ave. Subway. Phase II relies on preexisting tunnel, and Phase I, I believe, will finish. But beyond that, the money and the timeline remains ever so out of reach. For now, though, construction continues apace along Second Ave.

After months of wrangling with landlords and the city, the MTA last week decided to fork over $500,000 to shore up the shaky buildings along Second Ave. The start of these buildings, structural deficient since before the start of Second Ave. Subway construction, had been holding up the controlled blasting needed to get the Upper East Side launch box ready for the tunnel-boring machine.

Well, the wait is finally over. With a tip of the hat to Ben at The Launch Box, we learn that the MTA has been issued its FDNY permit, and controlled blasting along Second Ave. will start on November 2. The MTA’s SAS construction website features a notice about the blasting. It says:

The Second Avenue Subway project will be using a well established excavation technique called controlled blasting to facilitate the excavation of the Tunnel Boring Machine Launch Box. We have used this technique at many of our projects in Manhattan.

Controlled blasting activities are scheduled to begin the week of November 2, 2009.

The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) has approved a controlled blasting plan for the area of Second Avenue between 91st and 93rd Street which will be carried out in coordination with the MTA and S3 Tunnel Constructors. All blasting will be conducted under the direction and regulations of the FDNY. Blasting is permitted to take place during the approved Second Ave Subway working hours of 7 AM to 10 PM, although, every effort will be made to limit blasting to daylight hours.

Blasting Procedures

• All pedestrian and vehicle traffic will be temporarily stopped during each blast occurrence. Blasting will occur approximately 4 to 5 times daily, with each blast lasting no more than one minute.
• There will be a warning whistle before each blast
  • 1 whistle as a warning sound
  • 2 whistles indicate the blast is imminent
  • 3 whistles indicate the blast is complete and all is clear.
• Flagging personnel will be positioned at the north, south, east and west corners of the blast zone to inform and direct pedestrians.
• Signs will be posted around the work site that will state: DANGER BLASTING- NO RADIO TRANSMITTING

As required by New York State regulations, and monitored by FDNY, all explosive materials are delivered to and from the work site daily.

Vibration and noise limits have been established by the MTA and the project designer. The vibration and noise readings will be monitored by the construction management team.

Please direct any questions or concerns to Marcus Book, Assistant Director, MTA NYC Transit Government and Community Relations at 646-252-2675 or Claudia Wilson at the work site at 212-792-9716.

For the MTA, this blasting will be a major step forward in Second Ave. subway construction. Those of us eagerly anticipating whatever part of this line will arrive in the next seven or eight years have been awaiting the blasting stage. Hopefully, the residents and businesses already impacted by the construction can take some solace in the fact that the MTA is moving ahead with this project.

When plans for the current iteration of the Second Ave. Subway were first unveiled, the MTA opted against making the SAS a four-track line with express service. Only at 72nd St. would there be a third track, and that track, subsequently shelved due to rising costs, was included to orchestrate the Q’s merge from the Broadway line onto the T’s Second Ave. line and to provide for a mid-route turnaround.

Transit watchers were not pleased with the lack of express service. Considering the length of the route and its projected ridership — around 200,000 per day for just Phase I and 500,000 per day for the entire line — Second Ave. was ripe for an express line. Instead, the MTA altered the spacing of the stations and lengthened mezzanine station access to better serve neighborhoods. The 72nd St. station, for example, will have an entrance between 74th and 75th Sts. while the 86th St. station will have a southern egress between 83rd and 84th Sts. Thus, a station stop at 79th St. was deemed to be unnecessarily redundant.

Today, at the excellent Greater Greater Washington, Matt Johnson tackles the lack of express tracks in the DC Metro, and his discussion on foresight and the reasons behind including and not building a four-track system is certainly relevant to the SAS. Noting that the threshold for express service is around 300,000 riders per day, he tackles the politics and economics behind express service in the context of the WMATA’s planned Dulles extension:

Think about the position in which these planners found themselves. Considering the three-state makeup of the region, it is amazing we even have Metro. The funding problem is perhaps one of the most complex in the nation and a four-track subway would have roughly doubled the cost of the system.

Given that, had planners pressed for a four-track system, Metro would either be half the size it is today, would have taken twice as long to build, or would have been killed outright. The debate we’re having with the Tysons/Dulles Silver Line right now is case-in-point. Already the project has been sliced and diced in terms of frill, and it’s still uncertain whether it will ever reach the airport. The first phase dangled right on the cusp of being too expensive for FTA’s criteria, and several times the project looked all but dead. If things like redundant elevators and the familiar hexagonal tiles might be enough to kill the project, can you imagine the reaction of FTA if Virginia demanded four tracks?

No. We cannot fault Metro’s designers on the four-track front. Politics is the art of the possible, and thanks to their hard efforts, unlike many cities that were considering heavy rail in the 1970s, we actually built our system. And we finished it. Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Miami never achieved their full transit vision. Even here the belt-tightening Reagan years contributed to an extended construction period. Metro was supposed to be finished by 1983, but it wasn’t actually complete for another 18 years. Not until the Green Line to Branch Avenue opened in 2001 did the dashed lines on the Metro map turn solid.

New York’s MTA isn’t in quite the same position as the WMATA. It is beholden only to the state (and city) for funding as opposed to two states and the federal government. Yet, the same problems and lessons apply. It would be too costly today to fund express tracks along Second Ave. We talk about how the SAS is, per mile, the most expensive subway ever built. The cost would be prohibitive with just an added track for one-way rush hour express service let alone a four track tunnel.

The real problem though will come in the future. What will we do when trains break down and hold up the line? What will we do when express service is needed because the local trains are at capacity? The untenable solution would be to construct a time machine and convince New York to build this subway system in the 1930s or 1940s or 1950s when the four-track option was on the table. For now, we’ll just have to live with a two-track line if and when it opens.

S3 Tunnel Constructors work underneath Second Ave. to shore up the bracing system. (All photos via MTA Capital Construction’s CB8 Presentation. Click to enlarge.)

Whenever the topic of Second Ave. Subway construction comes up here — and considering the name of this site, it happens quite frequently — Upper East Siders bemoan the lack of obvious above-ground progress. Nothing is being done at the site, they say. Workers are just mulling about doing not much of nothing, and the project is a waste.

One commenter who lives and works near the Launch Box in the 90s on Second Ave. has repeated these claims for the last few years. “Remember,” commenter Peter Knox wrote over the weekend, “no work is being done on the SAS at all right now, nor has any substantive work been done for months. The thing is completely screwed up and people in the neighborhood are getting fed up.”

On Monday, he again observed idle workers above ground. “I wish it were only three guys looking into the hole,” he said in reply to a fellow UESer who noted similar conditions on the surface. “It is usually six looking and another five drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. There is no way they will be able to build the four stations, as they are now designed, in less than ten years.”

While it is true that the MTA is facing a significant delay in securing a blasting permit, the lack of movement above ground does not mean that nothing is happening at the site. In fact, in its recent presentation to Community Board 8, the MTA along the various contractors working on the project shared a few photos of the progress at the site and construction crews working. These crews though would not be visible to Upper East Siders because they are working underground.

The shot atop this post is just one of four images that show the state of the subway construction underground. The S3 Tunnel Constructors is currently excavating the upper bracing level and has begun installing the bracing system. It isn’t glamorous work, and with Second Ave. decked over with concrete, it isn’t visible to the community. But in order to get the launch box ready for the tunnel-boring machine, it is necessary work that is moving this project forward.

After the jump, three more pictures and some closing thoughts. Read More→

The current contract plan for the Second Ave. Subway. (Via the MTA’s Sept. 24 presentation to CB 8. Click to enlarge.)

Over the weekend, a few SAS commenters got into a long discussion about the pace of work — or lack thereof — along Second Ave. People who are in the neighborhood on a daily basis see little day-to-day progress while those who come through the Upper East Side see that something has happened but aren’t quite sure what.

Meanwhile, as time ticks on, the MTA’s plans for a tunnel boring machine launch fall further behind schedule. At one point, the TBM work was set to wrap up by Christmas of 2009. Later on, the TBM should have launched in July. Now, with unstable buildings and negligent landlords plaguing construction, utility relocation work is progressing south of the launch box area, but the tunnel boring machine and the excavations that require blasting are in limbo.

A few weeks ago, at a Community Board 8 meeting, the MTA unveiled a new schedule of contracts for the Second Ave. Subway. Ben at The Launch Box wrote upsome observations and analysis of this new document, and I’ve posted it above. Click the thumbnail at right for a comparison to a schedule released three years ago on July 11, 2006.

If we didn’t know about the myriad delays that have plagued the Second Ave. Subway, it would be shocking to see a timeline of this project pushed back four years over the span of 36 months. With contract lengths receding ever on into the future, it is of little wonder that people in the neighborhood think nothing is getting done.

Off the bat, we can see that the TBM launch box duration is a major source of delay. Originally slated to take 37 months, that aspect of the project is now scheduled for 51 months. It didn’t get started on time and won’t wrap up until June 2011. The station work too is set for a longer timeline. In 2006, the MTA budgeted 54 months for the 96th St. station work, 25 months for a retrofitting of the current 63rd St. stop on the F and 49 months each for the stations planned for 72nd St. and 86th St. The systems work and test runs were to take 53 months.

Those timelines have been blown out of the water. The 96th St. station is set to take 72 months to build; the 63rd St. stop will be under construction for 30 months; the actual work on the 86th St. stop will take 60 months; and the 72nd St. stop will be completed in 62 months. Systems work will last for 67 months, and Transit plans to run non-revenue tests for three months before an estimated December 2016 completion date. At the Launch Box, Ben notes that overall construction time has increased from seven years and one month to nine years eight months.

So what then are the causes? Soon, the MTA Inspector General will release a report that promises to be critical of the pace of construction. The Launch Box targets four specific problem areas: Utility relocation took far longer than expected; contracts were awarded later than expected; final design elements were not finalized until late in the process due to requests from the community for additional review; and real estate acquisition and stabilization problems have slowed down the overall process.

In the end, we knew the Second Ave. Subway has suffered through delays. With the hard evidence, though, it’s very tough to believe the delays are a thing of the past and that this subway line will open by the end of 2016 or the start of 2017. At what point does the MTA throw in the towel? When do we look for surface-based, light-rail solutions to the East Side transit congestion problems? Can the city afford to wait another seven or eight years for a subway line that may never fully open when more cost-efficient solutions are out there?