For better or worse, the next great frontier for the New York City subway system will open in the December of 2013. That is, of course, the one-stop 7 line extension down to 34th St. and 11th Ave. with tail tracks extending southward to the mid-20s and no station stop at 41st and 10th Ave. Still, it could be worse: The MTA has left some space for a future station at 41st St. if the money were to materialize.
Recently, the MTA’s photographer Patrick Cashin took us underground, and today, New York 1 talks with MTA Capital Construction head Michael Horodniceanu about the state of the 7 line. Tina Redwine reports:
MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu said after three years, the heavy construction phase is ending. “Pretty soon, trains will come and move people here. So it’s quite exciting,” said Horodniceanu.
The station mezzanine for the subway stop can be made out, and the shells of the two tunnels that run along 11th Avenue and connect to the existing 7 line are now complete…Contractors are building the platform that will go between the two tracks. To do this, they put down metal forms into which they will pour concrete. They will create a surface for the subway to run on through the tunnels…
Horodniceanu said the next phase are the finishes — tracks, signals and station fixtures. “If you ever did a kitchen, they bring the cabinets, but the finishes count,” said Horodniceanu. “Here is the same thing. The concrete, the walls are in place, but to get the finishes right takes time.”
In speaking with NY1, Horodniceanu let slip a telling statement about the project. “So we’ve ‘conquered the West.’ We’ve found no gold yet, but maybe the gold will be in the real estate,” he said. Of course, the gold is in the real estate. That is, after all, why the city is funding this $2.1 billion extension to undeveloped territories. Bloomberg knows it can spur development for Manhattan’s last frontier, and even if Related Companies has no idea when its dreams for the Hudson Yards will be realized, the subway will be waiting.
Meanwhile, a rapidly growing area with actual buildings and many people who need better transit access has been the focal point of controversy. The city forced the MTA to drop plans for a station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. when costs soared, and over the years, both a station shell that would allowed for easy future expansion and later a study to assess the feasibility of a post-build station addition were rejected by the city and Congress respectively.
Now, though, Horodniceanu, according to NY1, said that “the MTA has left space for the station, should the half-billion dollars it would cost somehow turn up.” It’s unclear exactly what that means or whether the station would be configured with side platforms or an island, but this tidbit of news offers up a faint glimmer of hope that one day, this mistake can be corrected. It’s doubtful that the dollars will materialized, and New York City is full of subway provisions that were never realized. Yet, we can dream.
Photo: A glimpse inside the 7 line extension. (By Patrick Cashin/MTA)
17 comments
Well, at least the space is there, so there’s the vaguest ghost of a chance that something will eventually come of it… right? Right? 🙁
It’s not actually that hard. The Subway to Nowhere will get trivial ridership, so shutting it down for a few years while they dig the new station won’t inconvenience anyone.
Zing!
Or, if they’re insistent on keeping it open, they could single-track it. Turn some trains around at Times Square to maintain headways, and continue others to and from Javitz on one track during construction. After all, it’s only one stop…
That, too. Times Square to Javits to Times Square nonstop will be about 5-6 minutes plus turnaround time, so we’re talking 10-minute headways or better on single-track. It’s perfectly fine for the off-peak, with many trains terminating at Times Square. But in the peak, it could cause too much conflict if some trains turned at Times Square while others continued on.
How on earth could Times Square to JJ take 5 to 6 minutes? It’s less than a mile. I realize there’s a pretty sharp turn in there, but still. More cost savings with substandard track?
Round trip.
Off-peak, the extension could probably be shut down for work – at least at first, ridership will probably be highly peaked. But during rush hours, there’s no way to run any sort of reliable service to/from Queens while single-tracking occasional trains to 34th.
Is there still talk of sending the 7 to ChristieLand/Xanadu/”The Swamp”?
If they can’t afford a Tenth Ave. station, and they can’t put a station at 23rd St., only two blocks south of the tail tracks, then how are they supposed to send it to New Jersey?
Any tunnel to New Jersey is going to end up being paid for by New Jersey, since New York already has paid for the infrastructure to get the line from the Hudson River to Times Square and Grand Central (N.J. might argue that the tunnel would give added value to Hudson Yards by making the property’s rail access uni-directional, but that just offsets the benefit New Jersey commuters would get from having direct east side midtown access for the first time).
A station at 41st and 10th seems like a much better use of $500m of the ARC money that Shumer wants to redirect to East Side Access.
It’s so frustrating to think of all that “stimulus” money that was wasted and did nothing but keep bureaucrats employed so they could figure out more ways to take our money and freedom, when that money could have been put to so many good uses here, like ARC, the station at 10th Ave. and 41st St., the Second Avenue Subway, etc.
1: if the stimulus money had been spent on these transit projects, it would still have been those freedom-robbing bureaucrats who made that happen.
2: the stimulus packages, both bushian and obamian, did something, though surely not as much as anyone would have wanted.
3: full disclosure: i voted for barr.
most stimulus-about 270B-came back directly to tax payers in the form of tax cuts. Other portions went to boost cash payments to unemployed or subsidize COBRA payments. Only a small portion went to infrastructure projects or cash aid to local jurisdictions. And judging by public sector shedding jobs, it didn’t do a lot to retain those jobs.
Ben, as for the HEADLINE of this article:
You meant to say 41st and 10th, right?
OK, I see that it’s been fixed now.