7 Line Extension

The Tenth Ave. station is no longer.

The MTA has scraped plans to build a station stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St. as part of the 7 line extension to the Hudson Yards area. Let’s not mince words: This is a terrible mistake.

NY1 has the story:

Transit officials dropped plans to build an additional 7 subway line station Thursday. Officials eliminated the plan to build a station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street when they were unable to obtain the $450 million to complete the project.

The Bloomberg administration said a station is not necessary since the neighborhood is already developed…

In a statement, the MTA said, “While we would prefer to include a station at 10th Avenue, it is not critical to the success of the overall project. If funding is identified at a later date we will revisit the issue.”

I have long advocated for the inclusion of this station in the final project. If the city is going to spend the time and energy expanding west, they should be as inclusive as possible. To omit this station now would be to give up on it forever. Just ask proponents of the Second System.

On many levels, this news is dismaying. First is Bloomberg’s dismissal of the station because the neighborhood is already developed. The purpose of subway expansion isn’t to spur on to development but rather to offer public transportation to neighborhoods currently lacking in that regard. The area west of 8th Ave. in Hells Kitchen needed this station. Drawing Bloomberg’s logic to a proper end would result in our questioning the need for a Second Ave. Subway too. After all, the Upper East side is “already developed.”

More alarming is the cost of this project and its ultimate result. The City and the MTA will now be spending a few billion dollars to extend the subway one stop. At a time when the system is falling apart, when maintenance projects are being deferred, when expansion plans are slowly crawling to a halt, spending billions of dollars simply to placate some real estate developer in charge of a project at least a decade away from completion doesn’t strike me as the best use of funds.

Update 3:00 p.m.: CityRoom has a more detailed story up about this news. This William Neuman piece features a statement from Senator Chuck Schumer: “Failure to build a full 7 train extension is a huge missed opportunity to promptly realize the complete potential of the Far West Side.”

Well said, Chuck. Well Said.

I bet tourists would be really confused by this sign if it were still there. (AP Photos)

When last we checked in on the 7 Line Extension at the project’s groundbreaking, Senator Chuck Schumer had just called upon the City of the New York and the MTA to resolve their differences concerning cost overruns for the $2.1-bilion one-stop extension to 34th and 11th Ave. As we know, the plan originally called for the city to fully fund a two-stop extension with one station at 41st St. and 10th Ave., but increasing costs led the city to say they would fund just a shell of a station. Six weeks before the groundbreaking ceremony, even higher-than-expected costs led the city scrap the plans for that station altogether.

Now, after a long stand-off between the City and the MTA, the City may be willing to negotiate a settlement of sorts concerning the station at 10th Ave. that should be built now; it will only get more expensive in the future. The first offer of a settlement is coming from none other than the man who first told the MTA they should cover cost overruns. Departing Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said the City would be willing to pay for half of the second station if the MTA were willing to pick up the other half. Even just half of this project could cost the MTA up to $575 million. Patrick Arden of Metro has more:

The offer represented a change of heart for the Bloomberg administration, which had balked at spending more than the $2.1 billion it had budgeted for the project, a key part of its plan to develop the Far West Side. To cut costs, the 7 extension had become a one-stop line to 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue, because “commercial tenants will not move” to the Hudson Yards without the 7, Doctoroff explained at the project’s groundbreaking ceremony earlier this month…

MTA chief Elliot Sander told a state Assembly hearing Thursday he’d consider splitting the shell’s cost, but it depended on the MTA getting more money from Albany. “Under the current [capital] plan, we do not have the resources,” he said.

Now, this is something of a red herring from Doctoroff. When the City worked out a deal with the MTA to fund the 7 Line Extension, the City was originally on the hook for the entire cost of this project. It was, after all, part of Doctoroff’s ill-fated plan to draw the Olympics to New York and a new stadium for the Jets to the Hudson Yards area. The MTA stands to gain very little from this extension. Why should they pour their hard-to-come-by capital funds into this project anyway?

New York politicians, criticizing the MTA for its fare hike on Wednesday, rushed to the agency’s defense on Thursday. “It would be a grave error for the MTA to even consider it,” Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said.

Brodsky, along with Schumer, the City Comptroller and other state and federal officials sent a letter to the city yesterday urging the Bloomberg Administration to foot this bill. The letter noted, as had been previously reported, that the city could pay for the station if they ditched plans for a tree-lined promenade in the yet-unbuilt Hudson Yards development. Seriously, a subway stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St. far outweighs some hypothetical trees that a private developer could probably afford to plant.

While the Mayor’s office, in a wonderful show of politicking, called upon Schumer and the Washington pols to send money to the MTA for this project, the city just should pick up the tab. They’re trying to renege on a promise, and it will become more expensive to correct this mistake as time wears on. This sure isn’t the last we’re going to hear about the station at 41st and 10th Ave., and I still think that, when all is said and done, the 7 line be making two stops when the construction is complete.

34th St. and 11th Ave. still seems like the middle of nowhere to me. (Source: AP)

We are now in the middle of a golden age of subway expansion. For the second time this year, the MTA celebrated a groundbreaking as city, state and agency officials gathered in the Times Square station to launch the 7 line westward to its eventual new terminus at 34th St. and 11th Ave.

The project, set to be completed in 2014, will cost the city — and not the MTA — an estimated $2.1 billion. Supposedly, this money will come from the tax revenues from the as-yet-realized Hudson Yards development. (For more on that development, check out Curbed’s top-notch coverage.) Officials were, of course, patting each other on the back yesterday.

“My administration is committed to ensuring the vitality of our state’s critical infrastructure as it contributes to fostering continued economic development,” New York’s Governor Eliot Spitzer said. “The transit system is the lifeblood of New York City, and the 7 line extension will bring an underutilized part of the city to life as a vibrant residential and commercial center.”

The Mayor, one of the driving forces behind this extension, spoke well of the project too. “Nothing better exemplifies our commitment to transit oriented development than the fact that we’re providing over $2 billion for the extension of the 7 and working with the MTA and the State to realize this vital component of our development plans,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “The development of the Far West Side simply couldn’t happen without this extension, and because of it we will see this area give rise to a vibrant and exciting neighborhood with needed housing, office space, commercial and cultural venues, and parks and open spaces.”

But what just a minute. As I’ve detailed in the past (here, here, here and here), the 7 line extension we’re getting is not the one we want or need. When the city and the MTA originally agreed to the project, the plans called for a stop at 41st and 10th Ave. and one at 34th St. and 11th. But rising costs quickly scuttled those plans.

The city balked at spending a few hundred more million dollars beyond than the $2.1 billion they had originally planned in spite of an estimated tax windfall of $60 billion from the Hudson Yards development. The MTA proposed a shell station at 41st and 10th that could eventually be turned into a full station when funds were available. When the city tried to force the MTA to cover the cost overruns of such a shell station, the MTA balked, and those plans were simply scuttled. Thus, the city is screwing over a neighborhood and the MTA. Once that work is complete, it will forever be significantly more expensive to build that station.

But as long as the drilling and detailing work is still east of 41st and 10th Ave., there’s hope yet. Enter Senator Chuck Schumer. Over the weekend, Schumer sent a strongly-worded letter to New York leaders urging them to include the second station at 10th and 41st even if that meant cutting down on some of the more useless parts of the planned Hudson Yard development. William Neuman at The Times reports:

Mr. Schumer asked the city to postpone plans for a costly tree-lined pedestrian boulevard west of 10th Avenue and to direct money toward the station project, which was canceled because of escalating costs…[City spokesman John Gallagher] said about $560 million would be spent on land for the first phase of the boulevard and portions of the subway line, including a new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue…

But in an interview, Senator Schumer said the city still had time to change course. “It seems so obvious that a second rail station is more important than a boulevard for economic development,” he said. “It’s not that the boulevard is a bad thing. It’s just if you’re faced with a choice, when there’s limited funds, you first do the infrastructure.”

I don’t have much to add to what Schumer had to say. The man is completely, 100 percent right. The city, if they’re really expected $60 billion in tax revenue, should be able to fund another subway station on an extension they wanted built in the first place.

While city and MTA officials claim they may yet try to work something out, their responses to questions about potential overruns and future plans were vague at best. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg outright dismissed Schumer. “Senator Schumer is never critical about anything. You must have confused him with someone else,” he said in response to Schumer’s letter. That’s not really the response I would expect from someone who could personally fund this entire 7 line extension.

Meanwhile, as construction goes, so goes politics. I’m sure this groundbreaking isn’t the last time we’ll hear about that stop at 41st St. and 10th. Hopefully, someone will come to their senses about it and just fund the whole thing. The city sure could use it.

Generally, when an expansion plan receives a contract bid and this bid is sent to a governing committee for approval, the approval is generally a sure thing. While those in charge — in this case, members of MTA’s finance committee — may voice objections during debate, the end result is generally an all-or-nothing vote. But the 7 line extension plans are proving to be a different beast as MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul voted against approving the bid and sending it to the full board for a vote.

In the world of the MTA Capital Construction, this is a very big deal, and while the truncated 7 line extension will probably still pass today’s full board vote, the session promises to be explosive. NY1’s Bobby Cuza has more on Saul’s decision:

Even though there was no competition, agency negotiators announced Friday that they were happy with the price they worked out for the tunneling work – about $1.1 billion, or just barely over budget. But the agency didn’t expect board members to criticize the deal at a committee meeting Monday.

“I can’t, for me as a fiduciary here, sit here and go ahead and approve a contract for over $1.1 billion of state money, or city money, or both, without having competitive bids,” said MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul.

Saul, the lone member to vote against approval for the contract, was not alone in expressing his dismay. Andrew Albert, not an MTA board member but a vocal transit advocate nonetheless, was none too pleased about the plans to eliminate the station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. entirely. “More [need] exists now around the 10th Avenue station than around the Javits Center station. Are we saying that conventioneers are more important than our own residents? I hope we’re not saying that,” Andrew Albert, of the NYC Transit Riders Council, said to Cuza.

But while the MTA board debates the contract today, City officials are working to secure funds for that station at 10th Avenue. Maybe we shouldn’t lose hope yet for this plan. According to Eliot Brown of The New York Sun, Mayor Bloomberg will try to cajole the state into forking over another $450 million to secure the station shell at least. Even this month would drastically reduce the cost of building another station on the extension in the future.

So now we wait. In an ideal world, the MTA board wouldn’t approve a contentious contract for a project that received just one bid. But in reality, that outcome seems unlikely, and we’ll be left with a flawed contract and an incomplete extension that will bypass the area that needs a subway station the most. Who goes to the Javits Center anyway?

As for a completion date, don’t expect the 7 line extension to materialize over night. Newsday reports that the line is due for completion in 2013 while NY1 says 2014. Anyone want to bet that something pushes this date back further into the 21st Century?