Second Ave. Sagas

An entrance opens amidst the Columbus Circle mess

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

Under Construction

In April, an imposing blue wall pointed the way into the Columbus Circle station. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The Columbus Circle station is, in a word, a mess right now. Undergoing a massive renovation, the station is dirty, hot, dusty and impossible to navigate. While this should be the state of things at 59th St. for at least the better part of the next year, the MTA celebrated a milestone in the construction yesterday when a new entrance opened at 60th St. and Broadway.

For the celebration, the MTA broke out the ribbon-cutting scissors, and MTA CEO Executive Director Lee Sander did the honors. As this entrance opens, the one on the island in the middle of Broadway closes, and the MTA tells us more about this new entrance and the final plans — with their 42-month timeline and $108-million price tag — for the station:

The new 60th Street control area cost $14 million and was carved out of solid rock made up of the well-known Manhattan schist while a vast array of street utilities were suspended from the decking beams. Those utilities included 20-inch and 32-inch city water lines, a 20-inch Con Ed steam line as well as numerous smaller electric, gas and fiber optic lines. The entrance, which includes two new street-to-platform level staircases and a MetroCard Vending Machine, was newly constructed under concrete decking, which minimized the disruption to street traffic on southbound Broadway.

“Funding for transportation is a scarce commodity, but we are doing everything we can with the resources we have available to improve the experience our customers have with us,” said Elliot G. Sander, the Executive Director and CEO of the MTA. “Whether it is a much needed new subway entrance or the initiation of Select Bus Service, we are committed to improving customer service.”

“This station rehabilitation project and particularly this new entrance are examples of the difficulties NYC Transit faces when upgrading what is an aging system,” said NYC Transit President Howard H. Roberts, Jr. “Despite the complexities of the construction, we have delivered to the customers who use this station a new, modern entrance which will provide additional egress capacity for the more than 69-thousand people who use the station daily.”

In the end, the renovated station will feature an elevator at one of the Central Park West access points and three new staircases along Broadway. Both platforms levels will be overhauled, and the now-abandoned central platform on the A/B/C/D level will be restored to use.

For many, the current state of the station is a major inconvenience. It’s not a pleasure to navigate through Columbus Circle right now. But in the end, it should be worth it. With the Time Warner Center and CNN occupying what had been largely unused real estate at Columbus Circle, this popular station has become more overrun with people, and the MTA, beleaguered and beaten, is doing all it can to modernize this station. Now if only they could do something about the other 467 at the same time.

Comments

8 responses to “An entrance opens amidst the Columbus Circle mess”

  1. Mark L

    Good news, but what about that escalator by the TWC which has been busted for months on end now?

    And I agree…I commute in/out of this station every day and can confirm that it is in fact “dirty, hot, dusty and impossible to navigate.”

    Reply
  2. Marc

    “the now-abandoned central platform on the A/B/C/D level will be restored to use.”
    Can you describe how that center platform will be used other than a place to collect the garbage?

    Reply
    1. Benjamin Kabak

      I’m not quite sure how they plan on using the central passage — perhaps as a crossover for the uptown and downtown IRT stops. But according to the original plans, the central platform will be reopened as a passageway for pedestrians. Train doors won’t open on to that platform.

      Reply
  3. C

    Man, I really hope they don’t split up the local and express waiting areas like they do at Penn Station. And as for that exit– went through it yesterday and it SUCKED. That station is downright dangerous.

    Reply
  4. Marc Shepherd

    No, they’re not implementing a Penn Station-like layout. The center platform will be used only as a passageway — mainly, I suspect, to serve as a crossover between the uptown/downtown IRT platforms.

    Reply
  5. Brian Griffin

    This station has made a lot of progress from a pretty dismal start — it will be especially interesting to see what happens to the walls on the IRT level, where the original wall designs had been all but lost pre-renovation; hopefully something like the 103rd-110th-116th Street renovations is in order, reconstructing a replica of the original look.

    But the parts of the station which have been completed suggest that it may never look as good as some of the other renovated stations do, thanks to awkwardly low ceilings, unusually large amounts of overhead cables and pipes, and rampant, and continuing, leaky pipes causing continual water damage even to some already-fixed parts of the station. We’ll see.

    (Oh, and by the way, it’s always been hot. For some reason, there is a real heat trap on the Downtown 1 platform with little ventilation available; the problem may get even worse once the old staircase entrance on that platform is closed up.)

    Reply
  6. Be

    Wow. It’s only took them about 4 years to open a single entrance.

    Reply
    1. NYjunkie

      The single new entrance at 60th St. did not take 4 years to open. The said entrance is just part and parcel of all the work going on in the station which, by the way, started only in 2006… please do the math – definitely not 4 years.

      Reply

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