The MetroLink plan put for by the RPA in 1999 was far more extensive than the MTA's SAS proposal.
In the recent history of the Second Ave. Subway, 1999 was a pivotal year for the long-aborning subway line. With New York’s economy on the upswing and subway ridership along Lexington Ave. creating cattle car-like conditions, New York politicians and transit activists were pressuring the authority to include a funding request for the Second Ave. line as it got ready to propose the 2000-2004 capital plan. How ambitious the MTA would be in its plans for Second Ave. though was an open question.
As the debate over Second Avenue’s subway future wore on that summer, three contending proposal emerged. The first was a very modest one put forward by their MTA that featured four potential solutions to the Lexington Ave. subway crunch. The first was a no-build plan that would look to improve current service through signal upgrades and increases in train capacity. The second focused on creating priority bus lanes on First and Second Aves. from 96th St. to Houston St. The third involved building a subway line from 125th St. to 63rd St. with a connection to the Broadway line via the unused tunnel at 63rd St. — also known today as Phases 1 and 2 of the SAS. The fourth involved that new subway line but with a streetcar that go from 14th St. and Union Square to Broad St. via the Lower East Side.
Reaction to these proposals was intense and immediate: No one liked them. ”The M.T.A. has proposed mere tokens,” then-Public Advocate Mark Green, head of a group of politicians pushing a full Second Ave. line, said. This group later called upon the MTA to ask for funding for the full line. ”We expect the M.T.A. to offer bold solutions to big problems,” they said.
The Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA echoed those politicians. ”We do support the north subway, but only as a step toward a full-length subway,” Michael T. Doyle, the committee’s transportation planner, said. ”It’s a good first step but they can’t just stop with that.”
As city politicians spent the summer urging the MTA to plan for a full-length Second Ave. Subway, a third proposal from the Regional Plan Association remained on the table. Released in early January 1999, this call for transit expansion on a grander scale — 19 miles of new subway tunnel, 31 new stations and five new subway lines with the Second Ave. subway as the trunk line. The plan had a price tag of $13 billion, a figure we scoff at today, but RPA analysts defended their work 11 years ago. ”This plan makes it possible for almost everyone in the city to benefit,” the association’s Jeffrey Zupan said. ”Despite the price tag, people will say it’s worth it, if it does enough for enough people.”
As for the details, the plan — still available here on the RPA’s website — would have been the most extensive subway expansion project since the IND Second System, and it all relied on the Second Ave. Subway. The blue line on the map above would have served Co-Op City and Lower Manhattan. The green route would run as a super-express from Grand Central Terminal to Water Street and then onto Kennedy Airport via a new line over the Van Wyck. The brown line would have traveled from Grand Central to the Financial District and into Brooklyn via Second Ave. and the Nassau St. line. The black route would run via Second Ave. to Jamaica. The red line would go from Laurelton to Gravesend via LIRR tracks, head down Second Ave. and spur off at 14th St. to Ave. C as original SAS planners had hoped. This line would then enter Brooklyn on the F and run express via the IND Culver line to Ave. X.
Over a decade later, we still argue for these transit expansions, but MetroLink never came to be. One day, we hope for F express service in Brooklyn and a high-speed rail link from Lower Manhattan to JFK Airport. We want to see the Second Ave. Subway extended into the Bronx and to Co-Op City, and Alphabet City too yearns for closer subway access. The planners who don’t have to write the checks can afford to dream big.
Meanwhile, we know how the story ended. The MTA earned approval for a four-phase plan to build the Second Ave. Subway from 125th St. to Hanover Square, and I can’t shake the feeling that the authority’s original goal to build a subway only from 125th St. to 63rd St. may be all that we get. The agency has money for Phase 1, and Phase 2 relies on a good portion of preexisting track. Beyond that, Phases 3 and 4 await money, a political ally and time. The politicians may have won on paper in 1999, but an Upper East Side Second Ave. subway stub remains a very distinct possibility. It’s better than nothing even as the RPA’s MetroLink remains alluring and oh-so-far out of reach.
22 comments
Ah, yes, the days when there was no need to worry about trivialities like frequency splitting or good system coverage. Quick: what’s more important – a 125th Crosstown, or duplicating the Fulton Street Line with an Atlantic subway?
In addition to the unnecessary and inefficient redundancies, this MetroLink plan also called for commuter rail/subway mode share, the likes of which New York City has never seen. On top of that, the price tag for this five-line expansion was just $13 billion. I laughed.
The big takeaway though is that the MTA has set itself up to build just Phase 1 and 2 of the SAS as they wanted to all along, and the politicians never seemed to catch on.
By “mode share”, do you mean LIRR and Subways operating on the same tracks? (as they once did to the now decrepit Chambers St. J/M/Z station), or are you talking about a more uniform experience, where transferring from rail to subway doesn’t involve navigating a maze (Penn Station), traffic (Hunterspoint Ave), or separate fare collection (everywhere)? I once rode the BART system in San Francisco, and it’s hard to tell whether that’s a rapid-transit or a commuter rail system.
It is indeed both, which is the beauty of it. It operates with subway frequencies within San Francisco and Oakland due to merging of branch lines, providing Oakland’s only subway service, and supporting Muni with additional capacity and filling a gap in service along Mission, but past Daly City/Bay Fair and sort of past MacArthur operates as a high-frequency commuter service. It’s not perfect; fares are higher than Muni and there are no monthly passes, so Oakland residents and SF residents along Mission pay higher fares than their counterparts along more westerly streets served by Muni subway-surface LRT. Still, as compromise systems go, the Bay Area could’ve done a lot worse.
Of course, I’ll caveat: locals complain endlessly about BART because I’ve never met someone who was happy with their local transit agency, and there are some quirks about it that, in hindsight, should have been standardized – e.g., BART uses a bizarre wide-gauge track because they had hoped to run trains north of San Francisco via the Richmond and over the extremely windy GG Bridge (the wide gauge thought to be needed to ensure vehicle stability), but the likelihood of that happening is substantially less than that of Phases III and IV of SAS – the unique wide-gauge system, making all BART equipment highly individualized and preventing BART from buying anything at all off-the-shelf, meant that BART’s per-mile costs make SAS look like shopping at the 99c store. Oops.
Perversely, that’s why the Richmond/GG extension to Marin/Sonoma will never happen – the costs of the GG-compatible wide-gauge system mean that actually building to the North Bay is prohibitively expensive. Of course, hindsight being 20/20, but… as a Californian, I’ve always told people that California’s experiements (some of them successful, some of them not) provide benefits for every city in the US – California (and the Bay Area in particular) has the courage to try things that other localities wouldn’t touch with a barge pole – the failures are embarassing but the successes are quietly replicated throughout the country.
It’s true. When you look at phase 3, it’s obviously much more difficult than phases one or two. You’d have to work in the heart of Manhattan, build under numerous existing subway lines, construct transfers, etc. It would be many times more difficult than the first two phases which are already problematic. Of course, phase 3 is the part most New Yorkers outside the Upper East Side would actually use.
True: it’s much more difficult. The standard non-US cost of a project with so many crossings would be $250 million per km; lines that don’t cross anything come in at $150-200 million per km. And Phase 4, which has even more crossings operating in a constrained space, might even go up to $400-500 million/km.
Ben — I don’t know why you or we should be mad at the MTA for only wanting to do only the Upper East Side part, in effect Phase I & II, instead of the whole thing at once. The MTA was being realistic, almost prophetic about the ability to pay, and honest with the citizens.
The bullshit politicians — and thanks for reminding me why I was never a fan of Mark Green, I’d mostly remembered Manhattan Boro President Virginia Fields for her conspicuous role in this charade — those guys lied to themselves, to be kind, and certainly lied to the citizens by acting as if we actually could get the whole thing done in one fell swoop. Meanwhile they demanded ‘studies’ and ‘reviews’ and in effect delayed the needed work on Phase I and raised its cost.
Oh, I’m not mad at them for it. I think it’s just a little ridiculous to go through the planning charade for phases 3 and 4 just because a bunch of politicians who couldn’t guarantee funding raised a stink. I definitely blame Green, Fields and Co. for it.
Yes, the Fulton line has so much capacity and is relatively fast. There really isn’t much need to convert the Atlantic branch, I don’t think. Connecting the Fulton line to the SAS would be useful, though, as the A/C tunnel can’t handle much more.
Ever since this project was kicked off in (I think) 2006, I’ve always heard of the four phases of SAS, and then dreams of future expansions to the Bronx and Brooklyn. There are so many downtown trains that go to Brooklyn, I can’t imagine the need for another one. Wouldn’t a connection to Staten Island make more sense?
Despite the many tunnels into Brooklyn, there are still parts of the borough that are poorly served by transit.
But let’s face it: there is no funding even to complete the four SAS phases already announced, much less the expansion to other boroughs.
The underserved parts of Brooklyn wouldn’t get anything from the Metrolink plan. They’d get a lot more from a Utica subway, an extension of the Nostrand line, and Triboro RX.
Scott E, if you’re going to connect to Staten Island you’d need to route a downtown train through Brooklyn to get there.
And in fact the stub of a tunnel is hidden away out in Bay Ridge.
Scott, any connection to Staten Island would be from Brooklyn near the Verrazano. It’s called the Verrazano Narrows Bridge for a reason. That’s where the narrowest point in NY harbor is. A direct tunnel from Manhattan to Staten Island would be insanely expensive.
The line would have to connect to St. George terminal somehow. Going through the narrow would be a huge detour for the line. If anything was done it would be a 1 line extension to Governors Island and Red Hook Bk then cut over to SI.
Ben, I quibble with saying that Phase 1 is even fully funded. It isn’t. There is money in the 2010-2014 to finish off Phase 1 that isnt approved…So we could be looking at sealed up tunnels again if Albany doesnt approve the new capital plan…
That is literally true. This time, as opposed to the 1970s, I think the metaphorical train has left the station, and we would not see that happen again.
But I still have serious doubts that Phase 2 will be funded anytime in the next 10–15 years, and you can forget about Phases 3 and 4.
I’m still praying for June. When the Tunnel Boring Machine starts to chew rock, THEN I will surely be past the point of no return for Phase I. And in any case, that damned Socialist Obama will be the one who somehow finishes paying for this huge piece of public transit.
But Phase II? That will be another Administration. I voted for a bond issue, when, like 1967?, to build the SAS. I expect to live to see Phase I completed, but Phase II, not so much. By the time they get to Phase III and IV, the melting Greenland ice cap will be sliding into the sea.
Much of Phase II is preexisting tunnel. That’s why it’ll be pretty easy and not that expensive for the MTA to construct it. Beyond that, I’d be surprised to see much more.
Phase II will nevertheless cost many billions. There is still enough missing tunnel to require a TBM machine to be inserted, station caverns and entrances to be built, track and signals to be laid, additional rolling stock to be purchased, etc. It is slightly less massive, but very big nonetheless.
The nice thing about the way Metrolink connected with Brooklyn is not that there were new lines, it is that it cut a lot of time off a trip to east midtown from Brooklyn at relatively low cost. Only the 4 and 5 go to east midtown and they only serve a small sliver of the borough. Under Metrolink, you could connect three existing sets of subway tracks to east midtown and provide much more attractive services along those lines than exists now.
Transfers aren’t the end of the world. In fact finishing the Bleecker/Broadway-Lafayette transfers would do much more for Brooklyn-East Side connectivity than anything else. Building a Utica subway would do a lot as well, since the only logical places to connect it to are the 4 and Second Avenue Subway (and in both cases there would be relatively painless transfers to the West Side – at Nevins on the 4, or at Fulton/Utica for an SAS connector).