7 Line Extension

The new Manhattan terminus for the 7 train will feature a lengthy mezzanine and a direct entrance into the Javits Center. (Click the image to enlarg)

During the one and only time I went into the construction site for the 7 line extension, I wasn’t allowed to bring a camera. It is, as any subway construction site is, a grandiose cavern with equipment everywhere. When I saw it this past summer, eventual platforms were under construction and the two-story cavern was receiving its finishing touches.

Today, The Architect’s Newspaper shares some photos and renderings from the site. Tom Stoelker had a chance to journey down to 34th ST. and 11th Ave. late last month, and today, he published his piece on the site. It has photos of the work in progress as well as the latest in renderings. The scene above shows the station mezzanine, complete with entrance to the seemingly doomed Javits Center, and his post also features a nifty cutaway of the 7 train’s new deep cavern station.

The 7 line extension is still set to open in December of 2013, less than two years from now. By then, hopefully, work will have started at the Hudson Yards site, and we’ll have a better sense of what the future holds for the Javits Center. The subway, which has long ushered in development to the city’s wilds, will be there waiting for it all to grow.

Should the 7 line head to Hoboken instead of Secaucus? (Map via The Wall Street Journal)

It’s been a few months since we’ve heard much about the city’s nascent plans to send the 7 line to Secaucus. In October, we heard reports that Mayor Bloomberg will push to get the $10 billion extension off the ground before he leaves office in 2013. It would be his shining transit moment and could transform cross-Hudson commuting.

But what if sending the train to Secaucus is only half of a good idea? Maybe the 7 should cross the Hudson, but maybe it should have a different destination. Last November, we heard rumblings of this thought as the region’s planners offered their opinions on the Secaucus extension. At the time, former Transit planner Bob Previdi suggested sending the subway to Newark Airport or even Hoboken, a major hub for New Jersey Transit service that is even closer than Secaucus.

This week, for Crain’s New York, Previdi trumpets a refined idea: The 7 should go to Hoboken instead of Secaucus. He writes:

There are three important reasons to consider Hoboken over Secaucus. First, extending the No. 7 to Secaucus would take 21,000 feet of construction, while Hoboken Terminal sits only 9,000 feet away, which would incur billions less in construction costs.

Second, Hoboken Terminal is a huge facility with plenty of spare capacity. It sits on 50 acres, has 17 platform tracks and is used by only 32,000 passengers a day. By comparison, New York’s Penn Station sits on two blocks, has 21 tracks and is used by over 500,000 passengers a day. It has no spare capacity. Third, the original ARC project was designed to double NJ Transit’s rail ridership—Secaucus is not capable of accomplishing this without major track changes. Only two tracks lead into Secaucus from Newark, which is why it is a major choke point on the Northeast Corridor.

Mr. Bloomberg’s initial response to the canceled ARC project would work brilliantly in Manhattan because it uses spare capacity on the No. 7 to avoid building a station under Macy’s. By the same token, Hoboken has spare terminal and track capacity and is much closer to the 7 than Secaucus. Marrying Hoboken Terminal and the 7 would cost half as much as the other projects, or less.

As the finer points of the engineering study for the plan to send the subway to Secaucus have yet to be released, it’s tough for me to pass judgment on Previdi’s idea. It’s worth noting too that Hoboken already has a subway system in PATH that connects to Manhattan. I can say however that Previdi presents an intriguing competing plan. He is very much in support of the mayor’s pet project, but he wants to see something realized that will help with New Jersey Transit’s capacity problems. Ultimately, that might be too tall an order for a subway extension, but if someone is going to sink $10 billion into a trans-Hudson tunnel, it must deliver returns.

It’s been 15 months since Gov. Chris Christie torpedoed the ARC Tunnel. At the time, as Previdi notes, he promised to “consider more reasonable solutions to meet NJ Transit’s goals.” Maybe throwing New Jersey’s support behind a subway extension will be considered a more reasonable solution, but maybe the 7 can’t do as much as the region wants and needs. Still, if this project is to move forward, we must consider all possibilities, and Hoboken is indeed out there, awaiting its attention and perhaps a subway stop too.

The MTA late last week unveiled a new video glimpse inside the 7 line extension,and progress is moving quickly. According to the video, the build-out of the station at 34th St. and 11th Ave. has been completed ahead of schedule, and the area is ready for the vast array of finishes, ventilation structures and signals that must be installed before the extension enters revenue service by the end of 2013.

Throughout the video, Shawn Kildare from MTA Capital Construction calls the terminal a real “21st century station” with ample room for passengers to circulate throughout the space. It will connect the Javits Center and the Hudson Yards development to the subway, but it won’t provide a station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. The barest of provisioning has been implemented to ensure future work if the funds are ever in place, but this project should be remembered for what it failed to deliver to Hells Kitchen as much as for it promises to deliver to the Far West Side.

As the crow flies, Secaucus is closing to Midtown than Staten Island is.

In news that will shock no one, New Jersey is willing to throw its political support behind Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to send the 7 train to Secaucus while Staten Island politicians are objecting. As the plan exists right now as nothing more than a long-standing dream suddenly drawing Bloomberg’s attention, the cross-border state politics and interborough maneuverings will likely dominate the coverage as long as the idea is still alive.

The first word from west of Hudson came from Gov. Chris Christie earlier this week. He likes the project because it requires less of an investment from New Jersey and because New York would pick up some of the tab — an aspect of ARC that led to resentment over the project’s funding. Christie, who didn’t say too much this week, proclaimed that New Jersey will “do our share.” in a radio interview, he said, “All of this will be able to come together.”

Staten Islanders, meanwhile, had far more to say about the project, and none of it involved much praise. Already smarting over Port Authority fare hikes that they said unfairly impact their constituents, Staten Island politicians banded together to oppose the project. Calling upon Gov. Andrew Cuomo to help improve Staten Island’s transit options, the bipartisan group bemoaned the focus on New Jersey in a letter to Albany.

“”This is a project that is worthy of consideration in the future. Now is not the time to explore more ways to get from New Jersey to Manhattan when it’s our toll money paying for it,” the letter said. “We would also encourage you to have your appointees on the Port Authority Board reject any funding for exorbitant projects until we have reached an agreement on how we can lessen the overall financial impact for residents of Richmond County. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey simply must find alternative means of revenue, then off the backs of Staten Islanders.”

Allen Cappelli, an MTA Board member from Staten Island, expressed his concern that the 7 line extension was targeting the wrong folk. “I applaud the mayor for his vision of connecting part of the region to the transit system. I’d hoped that his vision would include Staten Island and its 500,000 residents,” he said. “We ought to be talking about connecting Staten Island too. hat’s regional interconnectivity. It’s fine to give lip service to the world’s greatest parking lot – the Staten Island Expressway – but words are not good enough.”

The keys though are demographics, geography and politics. If the Mayor’s goal is to increase the region’s interconnectivity while alleviating congestion across the Hudson and shepherding people to the Hudson Yards development and Midtown, the 7 line extension to Secaucus makes far more sense than a subway to Staten Island. The population density in Hudson County is nearly double that of Staten Island, and the New Jersey county, separated from the city by only a river and a state border, is closer to Midtown than the borough of Staten Island is. It is also is home to more people who work in Manhattan than Staten Island is. Finally, a subway to New Jersey could draw on funding from two states and the Port Authority while New York would likely have to foot the entire bill for any Staten Island-centric improvements.

Of course, that bill remains problematic. No one knows how much this will cost and who’s going to pay. One commentator though has found the perfect donor. If Mayor Bloomberg is so concerned with building his legacy, Stephen Smith writing at Forbes says, why doesn’t he just cut the check for construction himself? It would indeed be a groundbreaking public/private partnership.

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)