These proposed entrances for the Second Ave. Subway on 86th St. are the subject of a federal lawsuit.
Tenants and owners of an Upper East Side building that will one day have two entrances to the Second Ave. Subway in front of it have filed suit against the Federal Transit Authority and the MTA over what it claims are deficient responses to Freedom of Information requests. The suit stems from a two-year dispute over the MTA’s updated plan to build entrances along 86th St. instead of alone Second Ave., and while the legal issue itself — a FOIL appeal — is fairly straightforward, the underlying complaints are not.
The story begins in front of Yorkshire Towers, the building that spans the northeast side of Second Ave. between East 86th and 87th Streets. The building’s main entrances are on 86th St., and it features a U-shaped driveway as well as two other automobile access points to a subterranean parking garage. Originally, the 86th St. entrance would have been within the Food Emporium at the northeast corner.
A few concerns drove the MTA’s design changes. First, the authority scaled back the SAS from three tracks to two, thus necessitating a new technical examination of the station layouts. Second, the authority had determined that a combination of temporary construction easements and physical plant demands would have resulted in the shuttering of the supermarket and extensive structural work on the building. (For more, check out my 2007 coverage.)
After conducting a Supplemental Environmental Assessment, the authority determined that the proposed changes would have no adverse impact, and the feds signed off on the study. Despite community opposition to the plan, the MTA put forth the design seen above at the top of this post.
For the last few years, the Yorkshire Towers Tenants Association has tried to FOIL the documents that underlie the assumptions in the SEA study, and the MTA has, they allege, not obliged. Alleging that they’ve been “stonewalled,” the plaintiffs are requesting the documents because they believe the findings are fault.
Therein lies the rub. While the MTA is required to respond to the FOIL request, the tenants’ association is searching for a bigger fish to fry. “The RMA” — the Residential Midblock Alternative — says the filing, “would create unprecedented and substantial impacts to an area with a completely different residential character than the normal commercial intersections where most subway entrances are located.” Furthermore, the RMA would impact “four active driveways,” the Yorkshire plaintiffs allege.
Claiming that the MTA’s decision to eschew an RMA at 72nd St. is inconsistent with their proposal to go forward with one on 86th St., the Yorkshire plaintiffs believe the MTA’s FOIL responses to be inadequate. The Yorkshire requests are lengthy. You can read their full correspondence right here (PDF). They supplied only the MTA’s table of contents as evidence of a deficient FOIL response (PDF).
It seems to me though that the residents are by and large concerned about the sidewalks in front of their buildings and the driveway access. As the schematics show, the entrances will point away from the building entrances but will block the driveway’s sightlines, something the plaintiffs say will have a “serious[] impact[]” on “parents with children, older people and safety concerns.” It strikes me though as NIMBYism. They don’t want the subway access points in front of the building even if people won’t be walking past the building’s entrance.
I’ve included the lawsuit after the jump. Legitimate gripes or a typical “not on my sidewalk-and-driveway” complaint? You decide.
25 comments
i’d love a subway entrance right in front of my building
Yeah, maybe a cut and cover type subway like Lex, but these deep tunnels like 63rd street emit foul air. This thing was very badly planned. I’m a lifetime Eastsider and I’ve always been against this project. People are going to be disappointed when they realize how long it takes to get to the platform and breathing that dank air while they suffer B division headways.
I think people coming and going from a subway entrance right in front of or very near an active driveway is a legitimate issue. It seems like a safety concern, and an inconvenience for drivers trying to turn in when a train lets out and for subway riders avoiding cars once they leave the station.
Maybe we should be discouraging curb cuts instead.
The artist’s conception makes the entrances look a bit expansive, front-to-back, as compared to the non-kiosk entrances designed for the IRT, BMT and IND during the 1920s through the 1960s. It seems like a more compact entrance in length (not width) would cause fewer sight line problems, even if it looks less elegant.
ADA requirements, my friend. Because the entrances must be accessible, they require escalators which, in turn, require these canopies and lost of surface space.
Personally, I like the 1955 design for the No. 7’s Grand Central entrance to the escalators from the old Mobil Building on 42nd Street just west of Third Avenue. That set the entrance back into the building south of the street and then had the escalators and stairs descend northward to the mezzanine level above the platform. It took up zero sidewalk space and a minimum of building space along 42nd St., while protecting the escalator equipment from the elements.
Doing something similar here would solve the driveway problem, as far as line-of-sight goes, but since the building’s tenants appear dead set against any encroachment by the MTA on their ground floor space, an entrance set back into the building would probably be just as hard a sell as the current design plan.
I can see the issue with the mid-block escalator. Looking through the drawings of the Alternatives, I’m surprised there wasn’t an option available for an escalator at the NE and SE corner.
What about the WEST side of Second Ave.
Aren’t there going to be entrances there also?
It WOULD make more sense to have entrances at all four corners,
rather than locate an extra entrance some distance east of the avenue.
The entrances on the west side of Second Ave. aren’t under dispute. There was no need to mention them here.
I’ve got a question: If the Q train is supposed to be routed through SAS when it’s finished, what’s going to happen when it opens since the Q now goes to Queens?
They have at least six years to figure that out. I wouldn’t worry about it yet.
Either increase the frequency of the N or bring back the W.
I think the “Q” only goes to Astoria because it’s hard to make the turnaround at 57th/7th during rush hours. There’s no need for two trains (N/Q) to make the run to Astoria. Once the SAS is running sometime in the 2020s, service patterns at that time will be the deciding factor.
The Q goes to Astoria to increase service there to make up for the lost W service.
Are you sure about that? As popular as Astoria seems to be of late, I’m not sure it needs two trains (one local, one express, at least in Manhattan) to handle the crowds.
Yes – that’s why on late nights and weekends the Q only runs to 57th/7th – don’t need more service there then (the W was only a weekday train) – they didn’t have issues running the Q to 57th/7th at all times before the W elimination.
OK, I’m convinced.
Astoria needs the two-train service during peak hours. The reason the Q lays up at 57th St. off-peak is both to provide adequate service for the Brighton Line and because Astoria doesn’t need those frequent headways off-peak.
NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY. Put up a mirror. No different than having a tree at the end of a driveway. What a bunch of whiners. And…there are plenty of subway entrances and exits in residential areas, 15 St-Prospect Pk, IND 145 St (access point at 147-148 Sts), Neck Rd, Ave P, 20 Ave (N). The list goes on and on.
totally agree. I live by this building and they are quite the hypocritical lot. HUGE construction project that damaged nearby buildings and blighted the neighborhood for over a year, and not a word of apology. For an eyesore, the Yorkshire Towers have a lot of nerve
Coming from DC which has all of these things: midblock station entrances, canopies over escalators, and very deep stations, I find this debate rather silly. Just typical NY resistance to change. Personally, I think the solution is to take away their driveway. Make that grab anyway, that will divert their attention.
i take their point about pedestrian traffic around a driveway, but there isn’t much vehicular traffic at that entrance that i’ve ever observed (i live nearby and pass that corner every week), and i don’t know about “four active driveways”: there’s the two ends of the circular, and the entrance to a garage which you can’t really make out at the right hand side of the picture between the Towers and the next (brown) bldg, so that’s a total of three (or two), unless they’re counting the garage as both an entrance and exit. anyway it’s puffery and that weakens their argument imo.
Feeding pedestrians toward an active driveway would be a legitimate issue, but the placement of these two entrances actually seems designed to avoid that problem (at least with regard to the semi-circular driveway; not sure about the garage entrance). The vast majority of station users will figure out pretty quickly that if you’re heading toward First Avenue, you should use the easternmost exit (which puts you past the driveway already), and if you’re heading toward Third Avenue, you should exit on the west side of the intersection (which I gather that you will be able to do, because of the mezzanine level). I would imagine that most of the people who will use the exit that comes out right at the northeastern corner of the intersection will be people who want to head north or south on Second Avenue. My (long winded) point being that there will probably not be many people who come out of either of those exits and then turn 180 degrees to cross in front of the driveway.
[…] has filed suit over the MTA. In fact, in a related case in late November, they sued the MTA over a FOIL request. In that suit, the plaintiffs requested the documents concerning the Supplemental Environmental […]