The subway system is replete with shuttered passageways whose existences are known only to those who remember the old days. The most extensive of those walkways lies abandoned under 6th Ave., and it connects the Herald Square IND station to the southern end 42nd St./Bryant Park stop. Opened in the early 1940s with the idea of, according to a 1940 New Yorker article, “reliev[ing] congestion at these points by distributing passengers over a greater area,” the passageway closed in 1991 after a horrific sexual assault in what was then a largely abandoned section of subway history.
The video above, shot in 1991 shortly before the MTA shuttered the tunnel, takes us back in time. It offers a glimpse inside the passageway before it was shuttered. The signs are vintage IND, and the ads are vintage early 1990s. From the video, it’s clear to see how foreboding and empty the walkway appeared at a time when crime in the subways was still relatively high. Today, few signs of the walkway exist, but it still lies there abandoned and unused underneath Sixth Ave.
For more on this tunnel and others lost to time, budget cuts and safety concerns, check out my post on the shuttered passageways from April 2010.
When it comes to ongoing the Second Ave. Subway work, the MTA is facing a mini crisis. Because Albany funded the current capital plan only through the end of the year and has yet to address 2012-2014, there is a slight chance that the MTA will have to freeze some big-ticket items if the politicians do not come through. Recently, the MTA has taken to 
