7 Line Extension

One day, this cavern will be a subway stop at 34th St. and 11th Ave. (Photo courtesy of MTA Capital Construction)

When the MTA announced its projected budget on Wednesday afternoon, the news focused around the steady fare for 2010. At the time, I promised more news this evening if the budget documents warranted further exploration, and they do not. So instead of more numbers about projected revenue and ridership, let’s head underground.

Since late June, when the MTA stuck with its 2013 target date for revenue service along the 7 line extension, news from the Far West Side has been scarce. Although I wondered if stimulus funds would save the station at 41st and 10th Ave., those funds and plans have yet to materialize. The station remains as dead as it was in September when funding concerns killed it, and neither the city nor the MTA has leapt at the chance to avoid making a costly construction mistake by not building it.

A few days ago, though, the MTA’s Capital Construction division finally updated the 7 line construction website with three pictures of the progress. One, seen above, shows significant progress at the 34th St. station cavern. Some concrete is in place, and the waterproofing has been installed. The other photos simply show some men working and some cables and ventilation for the tunnel boring machines. Thrilling stuff.

Meanwhile, in its document dump of MTA Board committee materials, the agency provided us with more concrete information about the 7 line extension. Found in the Capital Construction PDF, we know how detailed budget info and a set timeline for the extension. According to current estimates, this project — a one-stop extension of the 7 line from 41st between 7th and 8th Aves. to 34th St. and 11th Ave. with tail tracks do the mid 20s will cost $2,152,946,333. With this project set to add a little bit more than a mile to the 7 line, the cost of underground construction in New York City is prohibitively expensive.

According to the MTA documents, the project is still on target for a late 2013 debut. Originally, the agency had hoped to debut the 7 line service in 2012 after starting construction in 2006. The work, however, did not begin until December 15, 2007, and as such, the revenue service start date was delayed. We should not lose sight of the fact that, despite this early hiccup, the project has stayed on schedule since construction began nearly two years ago.

As for the nitty gritty, those tunnel boring machines are working their ways through the Far West Side. Through October 26, over 1800 feet of tunnel — or 19 percent of the project’s total — had been carved. As the picture shows, one machine has reached 34th St., and the other is set to get there by early December. Crews are continuing to work on the abandoned lower level platform beneath the 8th Ave. stop at 42nd St. to underpin the current A/C/E station. The new extension will pass directly through the abandoned stop and under the current station.

In the end, that’s about all she wrote for this update. The city still has not submitted to the MTA the necessary agreements for the agency to finalize station entrance designs, but that is a mere technicality at this point. If all holds according to plan, in four years, the 7 line extension — not quite a Subway to Nowhere, but not really a subway to anywhere other than the Javits Center right now — will open on time.

As the city gears up to vote in next week’s mayoral election, Michael Bloomberg has hit the campaign trail hard. He’s spending his billions and touting his record in search of a third term made possible, of course, by some underhanded term limit dealings.

On Monday, Bloomberg’s five-borough tour took him to NYU where he delivered a speech envisioning 2013, the supposed end of what would be his then-12-year turn as head of the city. During the speech, he spoke briefly about the 7 line extension, a subway line to nowhere and Bloomberg’s favorite MTA pet project. His excerpt on this city-funded extension was brief:

And Queens residents who work at the Javits Center, or elsewhere on the Far West Side, will begin riding the Number 7 Train past Times Square to 11th Avenue and down to 34th Street.

It’s the first new subway track the City has built in more than four decades – and we’re on schedule to complete it on time and on budget in 2013.

With an assist from the history of the New York City subway system and the Citizens Budget Commission, let’s fact-check the mayor. We start with a history lesson. Although the 7 line extension may be the first Manhattan-based subway expansion in decades, another line in Queens is less than four decades old. In 1975, the city began work on the Archer Ave. extension, a remnant of the Second System. Although work was slowed due to a lack of funds, that line opened in 1988.

Technically, the mayor is correct in saying that the 7 line extension is the first new subway track the City has built in more than four decades, but the 7 line isn’t the first new subway extension in that time. In 1988, the Archer Ave. Line, a remnant of the famous Second System, opened, and work on that subway extension had started in the 1970s and continued through the 1980s. The line itself opened in 1988.

One year later, the MTA completed work on a Tunnel to Nowhere. In 1989, the 63rd St. tunnel opened. At the time, it connected the East Side with, well, nowhere. The 6th Ave. line extended north past 57th St. to 63rd St. and Lexington and then under the East River with a stop at Roosevelt Island and then a terminus at 21st St./Queensbridge. Until 2001, when a connector to the IND Queens Boulevard line finally opened, this stump sat but 1500 feet away from the bustling Queens plaza. All of those projects have happened in the time during which Bloomberg claimed the city did not construct any new subway tracks.

And now we turn to the CBC’s report on the state of MTA construction. The report devotes three paragraphs to the 7 line extension, and it reminds us that the tunnel was to be completed in September 2012 with the new station operational by June 2013. Although the tunnel should still be finished by September 2012, the MTA estimates an on-time completion date for the entire project of November 2014.

Furthermore, the city reneged on its promise to fund a station — or even a shell of a station — at 41st and 10th Ave. As it stands, the 7 line extension will run from Times Square, through a neighborhood badly in need of a train stop to 34th St. and 11th Ave. to find only a run-down convention center and a train yard that may one day be developed into a mixed-use property. It truly is the new Subway to Nowhere.

Bloomberg can tout his transit record all he wants. When the best part of his opponent Bill Thompson’s transit plan is a promise to “object when when the MTA tries to cut service,” it’s clear that Bloomberg is running against someone unprepared for the job. But that doesn’t mean we should give our incumbent a free pass. The 7 line extension is not the only new subway in four decades; it isn’t on time; and it isn’t as originally promised. It’s arguably a bad use of money, and it will result in a subway line with few passengers that won’t alleviate overcrowding at a time when trains stuffed to the gills dominate the system.

As the Bishop-approved 7 line extension marches inevitably toward a 2013 completion, questions about the project continue to swirl. The City and MTA are at an impasse over the funding for a planned station at 10th and 41st St., and with the Hudson Yards project decades away from reality, this West Side extension will serve an area rich in space and poor in actual riders for some time.

Today, as the city comes to terms with the compromise transit package soon to be pass in Albany, the fate of the 7 line may again be at a turning point. According to The Daily News and some leading transit advocates, aspects of the 7 line extension — including the purchasing of new cars — are not high on the MTA’s priority list. As such, the new station at 34th and 11th Ave. will exist and serve whatever is in the area, but the MTA may not have the money for new cars to adequate service the entire line.

Pete Donohue has more:

Straphangers could wind up with an extended No. 7 subway line – but not more frequent train service – if the MTA has to adopt a leaner capital plan, experts said.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have envisioned a 2010-2014 capital construction and maintenance program in the range of $25 billion to $30 billion. But transit managers will have to cancel or delay some big-ticket items if Albany doesn’t provide enough funding to pay such a large tab.

Buying additional subway cars to expand the No. 7 line fleet is one move that could be shelved, according to Bob Yaro of the Regional Plan Association. “You would be spending billions of dollars on the No. 7 line extension, but without the additional cars, you wouldn’t be able to handle an increase in ridership,” Yaro said.

Donohue notes that on the MTA’s prioritized list of capital projects, the 7 line extension is in the third tier. The agency would first like to complete the installation of new tracking, the upgrading of power and tunnel exhaust systems and an overhaul of their old buses. The second tier contains the expansion projects for the East Side, and the third tier, for now, features future legs of the Second Ave. Subway, money for a 21st century communications and signal system and the 7 line car purchases.

We could debate the wisdom in that allocation for a while. I’d argue that a communications and signal system should probably be prioritized in the first tier, but the logistic behind that project are substantial.

Maybe in the end, the state delivers the money, and the MTA can go ahead will all three tiers of its capital program. For now, though, the 7 line extension remains a troubled project, a victim of inter-agency fighting and competing agency aims. To build it without the added capacity would be a disservice to hundreds of thousands of Queens commuters.

MTA workers oversee the 100-ton Tunnel Boring Machine on Thursday morning as Mayor Bloomberg and transit officials look on. (Photo courtesy of the MTA)

In a little while, I’ll get to this piece of bad news. But while the state legislature was busy ignoring the MTA’s needs, the transit agency and the city were looking forward to a new era of construction and subway expansion. Thursday was, then, a day of both progress and regression on the NYC transit front.

Early on Thursday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and MTA officials gathered at 11th Ave. and 25th St. to celebrate the lowering of one of the two tunnel-boring machines for the 7 line extension. These machines will work their ways north from this spot on the far west side of Chelsea past the eventual Hudson Yards area and then eastward along 41st St. until meeting up with the existing 7 tubes near Times Square. The extension, according to the MTA, will open in 2013.

Along the way, a piece of subway history will vanish though. A vacant platform on the long-shuttered lower level at the 8th Ave. A/C/E stop at 42nd St. will soon meets it doom as the 7 stretches westward. NYCSubway.org has some dramatic images of the destruction of the platform that has been closed since 1981.

Above ground, the politicians and MTA officials were, of course, in a celebratory mood. “Today, we’re beginning the next and most dramatic phase of the extension of the 7 subway line,” Bloomberg said. “By digging these tunnels, we are expanding our subway network into an entirely new area of the City: Manhattan’s Far West Side. It’s these major, long-term investments in infrastructure that will transform areas full of promise into neighborhoods full of residents, park-goers, office workers and shoppers.”

MTA Executive Director and CEO Elliot Sander used the opportunity to stress what the MTA, with money, can accomplish. “As we prepare our next Capital Plan, this project shows that with stable funding in place, we can build monumental works that will serve generations of New Yorkers,” Sander said. “We are deeply grateful for Mayor Bloomberg’s steadfast commitment to this project, and we appreciate and share his understanding of the important role that transportation will play in catalyzing the development of the Far West Side.”

While this optimism is not misplaced, the event and the release about it had the air of perhaps too much enthusiasm. In discussing the city-funded $2.1-billion extension of the 7 line, the MTA press release noted how this project will “help transform the Hudson Yards vicinity into a vibrant 24-hour neighborhood, containing a mix of commercial, residential, retail, open space and recreational uses.” Right now, though, the MTA has yet to sign a deal with Related, and odds are good that when this subway extension opens, development on the Hudson Yards land will be in the nascent stages. The city should build this line to encourage growth in underdeveloped areas of the city, but a completed Hudson Yards project is a long way off.

Furthermore, while these TBMs will dig past 41st St. and 10th Ave., plans for that station have been shelved. Until and unless the MTA and the city can come to an agreement, the two stubborn governing bodies will forego the best chance they have to build a station at a spot that needs one.

Meanwhile, the MTA has released the various technical details for all the TBM fans among us. It will take two months to assembly these machines. The first will be ready to dig in April and the second in May. These machines will dig under a large number of preexisting tunnels including the 8th Ave. line, the Amtrak tunnels near Penn Station and the Lincoln Tunnel tubes. The TBM excavation will wrap up next spring.

While the MTA remains in economic limbo, this is an important milestone for the transit agency. While a new station at South Ferry along with Phase I of the SAS and this 7 line extension may seem modest, this is the largest expansion of the subway system most New Yorkers have witnessed in their lives. Hopefully, this potential for progress won’t be dashed by the shortsightedness of our elected representatives.

The 7 line stop at 41st St. and 10th Ave. may be saved by the stimulus.

Before the weekend, we learned that the national stimulus plan would finally deliver a transit hub for Fulton Street. In fact, the stimulus may save another faulty MTA Capital Construction program from a giant budgetary mistake.

In the comments to that Fulton-inspired post, SAS reader Kris Datta dropped in a note about the 7 line extension. “I understand some of this stimulus money is also being used to fund the 10th Ave. station on the 7 line extension,” he writes.

To recap, the 7 line extension is a city-funded project that extends the 7 line from Times Square west along 41st St. and then south along 11th Ave. to 34th St. The planned development at Hudson Yards spurred on the city investment in this project, and while talks for the Yards are scheduled for Monday, it is resting on unstable ground.

When the city and the MTA agreed on the extension deal, the city promised to pay for the project up to a certain point and not more. The MTA wouldn’t take on cost overruns for a project that doesn’t benefit too many people and serves simply to fatten the wallet of whatever real estate companies winds up with the Hudson Yards lands. With costs on the rise, the MTA couldn’t promise to build the station stop at 41st St. and 10th Ave., and it seemed that the city would be investing a few billion dollars in a subway extension to nowhere when other, more necessary projects — such as the LIRR East Side Access and Second Ave. Subway — tottered along.

But now it sounds like the government’s infusion of cash will save another station. I’ll try to nail down a list of the MTA’s planned stimulus projects this year, but restoring this station seems to make a lot of sense. The MTA can start spending this cash on a construction project nearly immediately, and it will have long- and short-term benefits for the economy.

As much as this 7 line extension isn’t a necessary plan in ways other extension proposals are, omitting a stop at 41st and 10th would have been an insult to the neighborhood. The Hell’s Kitchen area needs more transit options, and while it’s true that the area is already developed, that shouldn’t preclude subway access.

In the end, though, the MTA can’t always rely on stimulus money for proper project funding. The authority has a whole bunch of plans in the works to expand and enhance subway service throughout the city, but these plans are plagued with high price tags. It’s great that the government’s efforts to kick start the economy will benefit the city, but one day soon, the state, the city and the MTA will have to find a more permanent solution to this capital funding problem.