Late last week, MTA honchos and various elected officials gathered underground at 63rd St. to celebrate the end of tunneling for Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway. Adi, the tunnel boring machine, broke through to the existing tube just east of Third Ave., and it seems as though there is, after seven decades of starts and stops, no turning back. There will be a part of the Second Ave. Subway sometime this decade.

Despite the accolades and photo ops, though, the subway is a long way off. The MTA has billions to spend and years of construction work ahead. It has to construct numerous auxiliary buildings and three stations, and although the MTA thinks construction will wrap in December 2016, the feds still say construction could last until 2018. That’s a long time for a two-mile extension of a preexisting subway tunnel with a $4.5 billion price tag.

The TBM then provided Carolyn Maloney, the House representative from the Upper East Side, with the perfect opportunity to unveil her third annual report card for the project. After giving the subway project a B- in 2009, she graded it a B last year. This year, it gets another B. Said Maloney:

“The MTA finished digging all the tunnels for the Second Avenue Subway this week – a huge breakthrough for the project and for our mass transit system. The MTA should be congratulated for achieving that milestone five months ahead of schedule. The project continues to score high marks on merit, given that it will serve 213,000 riders on its first day of operation; high marks on economic benefit, since it is providing 16,000 construction jobs at a time of economic hardship; and good marks on communication with the public and on construction management, as more than half the contracts for the subway have been awarded.

“However, the project continues to have a significant, negative impact on the community, with the emergence of new environmental concerns, and the MTA needs to improve its planning, adherence to budget, completion of entrances and ancillary facilities, and progress toward completion. But most of all, the MTA needs to stick to its current completion target of December 2016. Overall, we are awarding the MTA a ‘B,’ buoyed by the completion of the subway tunnels, the economic benefits of the project, and significant progress in awarding contracts.”

As it has been in past years, much of the 2011 report card is fairly obvious. Maloney still loves the project’s merit and potential long-term economic benefits. She also applauded the MTA’s completion of the tunnel boring earlier than anticipated.

Yet, other concerns remain. In grading construction management a B-, she said, “Failure to do due diligence on a contractor at 72nd street has delayed demolition of the Falk buildings; problems with environmental mitigation have sent dust clouds onto the streets near 72nd Street; and problems with engineering of an entrance at 69th Street has residents concerned about possibly experiencing damage to their heating system and other utilities.”

Furthermore, she has called upon the MTA to improve planning (B-) and mitigation of construction impact (C-). Staying on budget gets a C+ when, in reality, it should probably be graded an F. After all, the MTA once thought Phase 1 would cost around $3.8 billion. But ultimately she seems to like the project and wants the MTA to devote enough resources toward its completion:

“The MTA has an ambitious construction schedule, and it needs to put its full attention to making sure that this project is moving forward with all deliberate speed. However, without a new Chair who is committed to complete the subway and without assurance that state funding will be forthcoming, this project may never be finished. The completion date for the project has been extended significantly over the years, but there were no further delays in 2011 or 2010 – a welcome development. Future delays would make this project more difficult and costly to complete. The MTA must take all steps necessary to ensure that it does not exceed its current project completion date.

Completion of the tunnels brings great hope that early problems are being resolved and that this project will stay within its current timetable and budget. There is a lot more work to be done, but there is also a growing sense that a Second Avenue Subway may soon be a reality.

One day, someone with study the MTA’s planning process for the Second Ave. Subway. We’ll find out why it costs so much and why it’s taking so long to complete. That isn’t Maloney’s report though. Hers is an effort to get the MTA to fix its process and its relationship with the neighborhood. It’s a admirable goal but one that only gets us halfway there.

Adi breaks through at 63rd St. (Photo via Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Patrick Cashin)

On a chilly day in April of 2010 with skies grey and intermittent rain drops falling into a giant hole in the ground 70 feet below street level, MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder gathered with local politicians to launch Adi, the giant tunnel-boring machine that would be responsible for creating the Second Ave. Subway tubes. Yesterday morning shortly before 11:30, Adi completed her second run, and as a broke through into the preexisting station cavern at 63rd St. slightly east of Third Avenue, the MTA could celebrate a major milestone in a project that has taken 80 years and may still last at least another five.

“At street level it can be hard to notice progress sometimes, but down here you can see the Second Avenue Subway becoming a reality right before your eyes,” Walder said. “The completion of tunneling is an enormous milestone and further proof that the Second Avenue Subway is for real this time.”

Those two themes — street-level impact and progress that is “for real this time” — have dominated the coverage of the Second Ave. Subway work. In fact, on Wednesday night a few hours before the TBM finished its run, Second Ave. business owners again called upon someone, anyone to provide them with aid during the disruptive construction. “This is our 9/11,” one of them said less than tactfully during a meeting of Community Board 8.

The progress for real though is what officials came to celebrate yesterday. The Second Ave. Subway has come to stand for the city’s inability to see big projects through, and the jury is in fact still out on this one. Originally planned for construction during the 1930s, SAS ran into the Great Depression, a World War, the rise of the automobile and an economic slump in the 1970s. Along the way, politicians such as Sheldon Silver tried to kill the project by demanding the MTA fund it in full from one end of Manhattan to the next before starting construction, and even now, the FTA believes the MTA won’t meet its planned December 2016 revenue date.

Still, politicians were effusive in their praise. “This is a remarkable — and very welcome — milestone,” City Council Member Dan Garodnick said. “From above, it’s difficult to appreciate everything that is happening to move this project forward. But while it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, things are moving, and we can’t wait to see the first train come down the line. For straphangers on the overcrowded Lexington line and businesses in the construction zone, this is a moment to celebrate. It’s a moment that brings us closer to transit relief and to the additional infrastructure that will aid our City for many decades to come.”

Adi, the TBM, begin this journey through the east tunnel in March. The 485-ton, 450-long machine used a 22-foot diameter cutterhead to mine 7789 linear feet of rock at an average depth of 70 feet. Now that the tunnels are dug out, workers will line it with concrete as part of the permanent tunnel structure. While yesterday was a major milestone for Phase 1, though, the MTA has a long way to go. Stations must be built, ventilation shafts dug, money apportioned and future phases to consider.

Sandhogs pose in front of the Second Avenue Subway tunnel boring machine. (Photo via Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Patrick Cashin)

Ultimately, though, SAS is keeping construction workers on the job, and as the MTA looks ahead to some debt-filled years, I have to hope that the parts of the SAS we’ll see in my lifetime don’t just involve a northern extension of the Q train. One day, the T should arrive.

“This milestone is a tribute to the skilled contractors and trades people who work tirelessly every day to solve the complex engineering challenges and build the Second Avenue Subway in the most dense construction environment in the country,” Denise Richardson, managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, said. “With this milestone, New York comes one step closer to completing a vision of the Second Avenue Subway first planned in the 1920’s. Let’s make sure we continue to have the vision and fortitude to continue to build the transportation network that is so critical to New York’s economy and basic mobility.”

For more on this milestone, check out Ben Heckscher’s post at The Launch Box. He snapped some great photographs of the event, and there’s a video as well that I’ve embedded after the jump. Read More→

I took the Q back from Manhattan to Brooklyn in the middle of the afternoon yesterday. Because it was an off-peak train and the MTA is doing some work north of 57th St., the Q train turned around at 57th St. I boarded a train on the downtown express tracks, and what happened next was something sort of silly.

After 57th St., the Q these days stops at 49th St. to make up for the lost W train. I had thought it made that stop only if it were running into and from Astoria, but apparently, I was wrong. After 57th St., we switched from the downtown express tracks to the downtown local track in order to stop at 47th St. We proceeded along the local track from 49th to Times Square, and after Times Square, we switched back to the express tracks before 34th St. to continue downtown.

Furthermore, before leaving 57th St., we had to wait for an N train to clear in front of us, and we moved in front of an R train, thus holding up another full train at 57th St. At each switch, the train crawled, and by the time we left 34th St., we had probably lost a minute or so of travel time. It struck me as operations planning at its worst when the Q just could have skipped 49th St. while avoiding two switches and creating delays.

In the grand scheme of the MTA, this is a Little Thing. It’s impact on people individually is rather negligible, but it’s an inefficiency. Eventually it might matter.

Now, frequently when I talk about the Second Ave. Subway, readers want to know how the MTA will re-route the BMT Broadway Line. The current plans, developed before we lost the W train, called for the Q to run north from 57th St. to 63rd and Lexington and then up Second Ave. Today, we no longer have the W train, and it’s unclear what the MTA will do. They can’t cut service to Astoria, but they’ll need to run trains to the Upper East Side. It’s a decision that’s at least five years away, but it’s a popular topic nonetheless.

In my opinion, because of the switch, the train that runs up Second Ave. should be an express. The express tracks run north of 57th St. directly to the 63rd and Lexington line, and there’s no reason to slow down anyone’s trip because of the need to switch. The MTA will have to revive some sort of local service to Astoria by then as well. The ideal routing then would include a Q train from Brooklyn to 96th and Second via the Broadway express, the N from Brooklyn to Astoria also via the express, another local — call it the W — to Astoria via the Broadway local and the current R train service.

This is, of course, planning very far ahead, but in the interim, the MTA should eliminate the double switch the off-peak Q makes in the span of three station stops. It’s just unnecessary.

My fridge, complete with a T train, in all of its glory.

It will be a long, long time before the robin’s egg blue T train makes it way down Second Ave. In fact, the T isn’t set to begin service until Phase 3 extends the subway route to Houston St., and the Q will run north of 57th St. when Phase 1 is completed. That’s not, however, stopping the MTA from cashing in.

Last August, I wrote about the T train-themed merchandise for sale at the Transit Museum gift shop, and this week, Christine Haughney reports that the Second Ave. Subway stuff is selling like hot cakes.

According to the Transit Museum, out of 23 subway lines, the T is the 10th best seller. Of course, the famous A train, immortalized by Billy Strayhorn, is the top seller, but T teddy bears, mouse pads and t-shirts beat out such popular routes as the 2, B and D trains. Some designers, though, as Haughney reports, aren’t impressed:

the authority has alienated some designers more comfortable decorating the beige and taupe living rooms of the Upper East Side. Ms. Hilton said that she rarely had clients request blue or teal. One client, a 10-year-old girl, has asked that her bedroom be decorated in baby blue and her bathroom in turquoise. “In my world, it’s not a popular color,” she said. “But kids are asking for these colors.”

It happens that teal has been identified by the fashion world as color of the year. “It has a very upscale connotation,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, which surveys fashion designers each year and determines the latest color. “People with more discriminating tastes tend to choose that as a favorite color.”

John Barman, a prominent designer on the Upper East Side, echoed Ms. Hilton’s concerns about having a turquoise train line in beige territory. He hopes the city never pairs the turquoise T line with its orange lines, because that would produce a garish Howard Johnson effect. “It’s more of a Florida color,” he said delicately.

Amusingly — or sadly — enough, the MTA is cashing in on the T train when there’s no guarantee we’ll even see the T train. Optimistically, Phase 3 of the Second Ave. Subway won’t be around until at least 2030, and right now, the dollars for more than just Phase 1 aren’t there. But get your T train shirts while you still can. It might just be a collector’s item.

While the MTA is realizing dollars from a dream, others are making real money carting out Second Ave. dirt and debris. WNYC’s Ilya Maritz followed the rubble from underneath Second Ave. to various locations around the city. Some of the rock has gone to St. Peter’s College which is using it to build a dorm while much of is going toward creating the Ferry Point Golf Course in the Bronx as well. Ultimately, SAS construction has produced around 5000 tons of debris per day, but contracts have sold only around 1000-2000 tons daily for approximately $11 per ton. All in all, it’s not a bad day’s work.

Over the past few years, I’ve frequently received emails from Second Ave. residents complaining of the blasting. From early in the morning to late at night, whistles, blasts and vibrations would rock the neighborhood as MTA contractors went about the slow and torturous process of constructing a subway line. As you can see from the above video, posted by Ben at The Launch Box in March, it’s a loud experience.

Recently, the complaints have seemingly come to a head as the work has continued into the night. According to a brief item in The Post, blasts were going off well the agreed-upon 7 p.m. cut-off time. Residents claim that in recent months, contractors set off 19 blasts after 9 p.m.

Now, the MTA says it will respect the 7 p.m. cutoff time. While original plans called for blasting until midnight, Michael Horodniceanu, the president of MTA Capital Construction, has said the authority will revise blasting guidelines. “People don’t want to have a romantic dinner with the sound of pavement being obliterated in the background,” he said to The Times. “After 7 p.m., we do not blast.”

The MTA has had a tense and often contentious relationship with business and residents along Second Ave., and it’s clearly tough to build a new subway line through a densely-inhabited area. With five more years left on the project, the two sides will have to continue to work together, and limiting the blasting is a long overdue move.

This one’s been making the rounds this week. It’s a video of Gary Russo, a member of Local 40 and current Second Ave. Subway ironworker, who serenades Upper East Siders during his crew’s lunch break. With all of the noise surrounding the construction site, Russo just wants to give back something to the neighborhood, he told The Post. “We’re trying to give back a little bit, you know know? Lunchtime,” the singer said to Gothamist.

Russo, a Queens native, has garnered some praise from his fellow workers and disgruntled Second Ave. neighbors alike for his 30-minute lunchtime performances. “I got this one lady who hates the construction,” Paul Rodriguez, a fellow sandhog, said. “She’s always looking for something to complain about. One day she was walking across the street and she saw Gary singing.”
The woman was star-struck. It was the first time I saw her smile.”

In mid-June, Adi, the Second Ave. TBM, was digging past 76th Street.

As this site nears its fifth birthday — I’ll reach the half-decade mark in late November — my thoughts have often turned toward the Second Ave. Subway. I started this site in 2006 when it became clear that Sen. Chuck Schumer and the then-newly empowered Senate Democrats would offer substantial funding to New York City for the completion of the first phase of the Second Ave. Subway. After 70 years of planning and numerous starts and stops, a salvation for the congesting East Side IRT and access for those who live on the far East Side was on the horizon.

Of course, that was before the market went south, before Lehman Brothers collapsed, before the state only guaranteed funding for two years of the MTA’s key 2010-2014 capital plan that would have all but guaranteed enough money to cover Second Ave. Subway construction. Economically and politically, things are much different than they were five years ago.

Yet, I feel more confident today that Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway will be completed — by 2016 or 2017 — that I have at any time earlier in this website’s life. The simple truth is that the MTA has spent too much money and expended too many resources to pull up stakes now. The western tunnel is complete; the eastern tunnel is two-thirds of the way to its destination at 63rd St. The federal government expects this project to be completed, and numerous other stakeholders do as well. It will get finished even if the fights over funding are far from over.

What is still surprising to me, though, is just how much remains to be completed. The MTA is quite pleased that Adi, the tunnel boring machine, will soon reach its southern destination, and the completion of the two tunnels should be viewed as a major milestone. But this blog will have to double in years before I have a chance to attend the ribbon-cutting along Second Ave. That’s a crazy long construction timeline.

That said, the MTA is moving forward. As The Daily News reported, Capital Construction is gearing up to award a few key contracts. The contracts, according to Pete Donohue, are for “tracks, signals and communications equipment,” and it is in the words of The Daily News, one of the project’s “last major construction contracts” as the Dec. 2016 completion date inches closer. “The Second Ave. subway is no longer just a blueprint – we’ve made enormous progress and we’re committed to getting it done,” MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said.

The finer print is available on the MTA CC procurement page. The authority plans to open C-26009 on July 28. As the Solicitation document notes, that contract is to last 61 months. That timeframe brings us up to the revenue date for the Second Ave. subway.

Yet, stormclouds are brewing on the horizon. As Donohue reports, the MTA still has to cover approximately $940 million in funding for SAS. It is anticipated that the federal government will cover some via infrastructure grants and that Albany will guarantee the rest through legislative action this fall when it finally takes up the MTA’s capital funding gap. But transit advocates are worried about belt-tightening in DC, and even with union, advocate and contractor pressure, Albany sometimes marches to its own drum.

So we wait. Since the 1930s, the Second Avenue Subway has come to symbolize infrastructure ineptitude on the part of New York City, its planners and politicians. Its construction has always preceded economic downturns, but the MTA seems intent on pushing through. The first five years have come by pretty quickly; now we just have to wait out the remaining five.