7 Line Extension

Seemingly forward-looking at the time it was built, the station shell at South 4th Street now represents wasted money and opportunity. (Photo via Subway & Rail)

When the route we now know and love as the G train was completed in 1937, it was supposed to be just one part of an expansive plan to change the face of subway travel into, out of and between Brooklyn and Queens. Twenty-four years in the making, the Crosstown line, part of the Municipal Subway system, connected population centers in the city’s two most populous boroughs, and it was just a small part of the IND Second System.

As city planners constructed subway routes through Brooklyn and Queens, they provisioned other stations into their plans. Even though the funding wasn’t in place to build, say, the entire Utica Ave. subway, the Board of Transportation made sure that new stations that would eventually serve as transfer points were built as such. Thus, the IND Fulton St. stop at Utica Ave. (A/C) has a station shell that angles with Utica Ave., and the Broadway station along the G train has a six-track shell parallel to Williamsburg’s South 4 and Meserole Streets.

The IND Second System, as I explored in depth last week, never materialized, and for the better part of 73 years, the South 4th St. station has sat unused and largely forgotten. Known only to railfans and New York City historians, the station and the subway expansion plans fell to the wayside, and all that remained was a station shell, empty, abandoned and barely acknowledged by the MTA. It took, of all things, a highly illegal and dangerous street art stunt to return the South 4th St. station to the city’s consciousness.

Today, New York is engaged in its largest subway expansion effort since the IND system became a reality. Modest by the standards of the 1930s, Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway and the 7 Line Extension promise to improve access to underserved areas of Manhattan, but the provisioning isn’t nearly as robust as it once was. The Second Ave. Subway was once envisioned, unnecessarily so in the 1920s, as a six-track subway, but recent iterations have seen that total go from four to three to two. In this instance, while the Second Ave. Subway will be constructed to allow connections to the Bronx and Brooklyn, the MTA isn’t provisioning for anything along the route.

The 7 line meanwhile through a similar problem. Although tail tracks would potentially allow a southern extension or a potential connection eastward, the sticking point for this capital project has been the station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. Originally, the extension was to consist of two stops, but rising costs have slowly cut back those plans. At one point, the city proposed building a shell station — much like the South 4th St. ghost — at 41st and 10th so either it or the MTA could fund proper construction when the economy improved. The MTA rejected this plan when the city refused to foot the bill for it, and now, the last hope for this stop rests on the shoulders of a few federal official trying to find the money for it.

It is a gross oversight to skip even the provisioning for this station, and while the $800 million price tag is a legitimate concern, the city and MTA must figure out a way to include the ability to build it later. There is, though, one solution: The ARC Tunnel money is out there for the taking.

We know New York City officials are jockeying to secure their share of the $3.3 billion New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie gave up when he canceled the tunnel, and the 7 line would be the perfect destination for it. This is a capital project that needs an infusion of dollars, and the omitted station wouldn’t soak up all of the federal funds. It wouldn’t improve interstate mobility, but it would right a wrong in New York City.

In a recent short piece on the proper role of borrowing in infrastructure spending, Cap’n Transit briefly highlighted how poor spending can lead to 73-year-old station shells that go unused, but despite the labeling, the South 4th Street station doesn’t quite fit that bill. It was part of a larger plan that couldn’t get implemented because the money wasn’t there. Had the city tried to realize the IND plans after building the Broadway stop without that shell, it would have cost more and been more difficult to construct from an engineering standpoint.

Today, we’re on the verge of making a different mistake. We aren’t borrowing or finding the money to build something — a station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. — that will indeed increase revenue. The ARC money is out there, and it’s not too late to rectify this problem. But as the construction continues along the West Side, time’s a-wastin’. It will be worse to have no station at all than it is to have a 73-year-old shell just sitting there.

A few months ago, the planned 7 line station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. had been read its last rites. The city — picking up the tab for the entire $2.1 billion extension — did not want to pay the additional $500 million this station would cost, and although it would be a vital part to the future of the West Side, the MTA was no in position to fund it either. Today, though, Mayor Michael Bloomber, under pressure from the Real Estate Board of New York, announced a simple engineering solution that will keep the possibility of a station alive, the project on time and costs relatively under control.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Howard Saul reports, Bloomberg said he believes that plans for a station sometime in the future can be built into the project. He is now requesting federal funds to confirm the initial engineering reports, and when money is flowing again, either the MTA or the city can begin to right this wrong. “We need engineers to confirm that it’s viable, but we’re confident we’ve found a way to keep the prospect of a future Tenth Avenue station alive without delaying the current extension,” Bloomberg said.

The city is now applying for $3 million in federal TIGER II grants that will confirm that a redesigned station could be built after the extension is completed and if sufficient funds become available. As Saul writes:

Under the new design proposal, the new station would be built with two entrances and two separate platforms – one for eastbound and one for westbound trains. The MTA prefers now to build subways where passengers can enter at any point, no matter what direction they’re headed. But officials said the compromise preserves the option of the second station, allowing it to be built at later date without interrupting service.

Basically, the original station schematics had called for an island station as the 7 line current enjoys at the other Manhattan stops. Instead, the MTA would design the stop at 41st and 10th so that the stations are on the outside of the tracks similar to, say, 50th St. along the 1 train. That way, construction on the station could proceed without disruption to the train line as is happening on the uptown tracks at Bleecker St. right now. The solution is so simple it’s astounding it had not been proposed before.

With this initial victory in its pocket, REBNY officials say they will continue to work to identify funding sources for the station. A real estate tax would easily generate the $550 million needed to build it, but I doubt the lobbying organization would readily embrace that idea. “We recognize that funding for the full project is a goal we will need to work on collaboratively in the months ahead. And be assured that REBNY will continue toward that objective,” Mary Ann Tighe, REBNY’s CEO and chairman, said. “But without this action, and without this redesign, there would not even be hope that a station could be built. Now the residents and businesses located in this area, and those still to come to the Far West Side, will know that a station is still possible.”

In thanking the politicians involved in this process, REBNY President Steve Spinola gave a nod toward the residents, many of whom do not actually want this station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. anyway. “This funding is an important first step in fulfilling the promise made to thousands of residents and businesses who moved to the Far West Side because they believed they would have convenient transportation built in the near future,” he said. “We owe it to the community to continue pushing for funding to make the station a reality.”

Without commenting on the sheer obviousness of the engineering solution, in its statement, the MTA stressed a commitment toward wrapping up construction by the end of 2013. “”The MTA is fully supportive of the Mayor’s proposal to seek federal funding to study the viability of building out a Tenth Avenue station in the future,” the authority said. “While neither the City or MTA can fund the station due to financial constraints, we should not preclude the possibility of a station in the future. We will continue to work together to complete the extension of the 7 line on time and on budget.”

For New Yorkers attached to their subway system, the area of midtown west of 8th Ave. often feels like undiscovered territories. Parts of 10th and 11th Ave. in the West 30s or 40s are a good 15-minute walk from the subway, and as the rest of Manhattan has seen a spike in real estate value over the last 15-20 years, the area around the Lincoln Tunnel and in Hells Kitchen has been slower to grow. There are still, the romantics say, some true neighborhoods left on this island after all.

When the city and MTA announced plans to extend the 7 line west of Times Square to 11th Ave. and 34th St. with a station at 10th Ave. and 41st St., residents of the area reacted with something in between indifference and hatred. Despite living in a neighborhood that can feel marginalized and off the grid, these people weren’t holding their collective breath waiting for the train.

In fact, when the city discarded its plans for the station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. due to cost overruns, the neighborhood issued nary a peep. Not until recently did the Real Estate Board of New York, a powerful professional association, throw its voice behind a call to include this station in the 7 extension plans, and even then, those who live on the Far West Side stayed out of the debate. The silence was deafening.

At first, I didn’t understand why no one from Hells Kitchen seemed too concerned about the MTA’s plans. Those looking at the city on a macro level understood that New York was about to lose its best chance to bring subway service to an area woefully underserved by existing mass transit option. Any future investment would cost not the hundreds of millions the city claims a station at 10th Ave. would run them but in the billions. Provisioning for a station as the line is built would be far more economical than building one from scratch in the future.

Recently, though, after a few conversations with residents and a piece this weekend in the Daily News, I’ve come to understand why few in the area are actively calling for the city to build a subway stop there. It is, pure and simply, NIMBYism at its finest. The article in question is a neighborhood profile of the area around the Lincoln Tunnel. According to the News’ Jason Sheftell, this area has seen an explosion in the number of luxury buildings going up, and correspondingly, rents in the area are on the rise. Young people are moving in, and the old guard long used to being left alone in a relatively seedy area is getting squeezed out. Bringing the subway west will only exacerbate this gentrification.

One anonymous commenter on a post I wrote two weeks ago laid bare these concerns. While taking umbrage with my charge of NIMBYism, he said, “Families have lived in this area for generations and stayed here despite the rough times. Should they be forced out just to accommodate college kids who will move out anyway in less than five years?”

This argument against a subway station in a neighborhood in need of transit is the very definition of NIMBYism. Residents view a subway as desirable, but adding something desirable to the neighborhood makes the area more expensive. Rents go up; property values go up; property taxes go up; and some people are priced out of the area all because a subway stop grows. The same thing, by the way, is bound to happen along the Upper East Side in a few years.

But NIMBYism should not be an excuse for poor urban planning. On the grand scheme of the future of the city, the Far West Side will undergo a change no matter what. Whether we support Mayor Bloomberg’s blatant planning for the benefit of his friends in real estate, Related is going to build a transit-accessible mixed-use complex of residences and office space. The subway will run to 34th St. and 11th Ave., and the area will change. A lukewarm response from Hells Kitchen shouldn’t be read to mean that residents don’t want and the city shouldn’t build a subway there. The 7 should stop at 10th Ave. no matter what.

Despite controversy surrounding the plans for a station at 41st and 10th Ave., the 7 line extension is making fast progress along the West Side, and at the end of last week, amidst little fanfare, the tunnel boring machines hit a milestone. As the MTA posted on its website, the first of the TBMs has completed its 4661-foot journey to its receiving chamber 40 feet beneath street level at 42nd St. and just underneath the Port Authority Bus Terminal’s foundation. This spot is where the new tunnels for the 7 line will meet up with the preexisting tail tracks that now sit west of 7th Ave.

According to the MTA, the second TBM will reach this chamber in July, and the crews will then back the machines up to the launch box at 26th St. and 11th Ave. The massive equipment will be disassembled and lifted out of the future subway, and crews will begin finishing the tunnels before working on station entrances, platforms and support facilities. Thanks to cooperation between the MTA and Port Authority, some of the tunneling work initially projected to take 2-3 years was completed in 18 months, and the extension is still scheduled to enter revenue service in December 2013. Now if only we could see the station at 10th Ave. and 41 St. become a reality.

Photo of the TBM courtesy of New York City Transit.

It is the phantom subway station that just won’t fade away. It is the the phantom subway station that, for the sake of a neighborhood and New York City’s future, has to be built. And it is a phantom subway station that just might be inching one step closer to a return to reality.

I’m talking, of course, about the on-again, off-again station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. that will nearly make or break the way we judge the 7 line extension. To recap: The original plans for the extension called for a stop to serve Hell’s Kitchen and the developments near the Hudson River in the low 40s, but as cost overruns became steep, the city — which is funding the entire extension — dropped its plans to build this station. Only the new terminal at 34th and 11th Ave., the lynchpin to the Hudson Yards development, would see the light of day.

First, the city promised to build a shell station at 41st and 10th Ave. so that the MTA could later build a full station, but when that became too expensive and the economy went south, those plans were scraped. At one point in 2007, then-Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff offered to go halfsies with the MTA, but the cash-starved authority with bigger capital fish to fry declined. Then, nearly three and a half years after rumors of the station’s demise first emerged, the Real Estate Board of New York, under new leadership, decided to launch a last-second effort to save the station at 10th Ave., and that is where we find ourselves in 2010.

The news today is guardedly optimistic. Eliot Brown of The New York Observer rehashes recent history and finds that REBNY’s efforts could be paying off if only Mayor Bloomberg weren’t such an obstructionist. He reports:

Now, REBNY feels it has a plan that could keep the station alive, but the Bloomberg administration rejects it as unfeasible. Still, the administration, which initially resisted entertaining the late-in-the-game effort, is itself examining other funding options.

Steven Spinola, president of REBNY, said he had a consultant produce a report that recommended about $100 million in work to move utilities, an amount that could keep the option open for later funding to finish the station. The full cost of the station is estimated by the city to exceed $800 million.

“What we’re looking to do is preserve the ability that the station will eventually be built,” he said. “Nobody ever really expected the station to be built immediately–$800 million was not ever going to just come from some add-on in a bill in Washington. But can we do something so that over the next five, six years, money can come in from Washington?” …

A spokesman for the Bloomberg administration, Andrew Brent, dismissed Mr. Spinola’s plan as something that would disrupt the current project, which anticipates a line to 34th Street and 11th Avenue by 2013. “We’re not going to entertain any plans that add meaningful time or cost to the subway extension,” Mr. Brent said in a statement. “If a plan can be worked out that preserves the possibility of a station getting built in the future without delaying or adding cost to the project, we’re open to it. That remains a big if.”

Bloomberg’s line of reasoning is utterly spurious. The city has gone this long without 7 service to the Hudson Yards area, and considering that real estate development won’t take off for years in that neighborhood, if New Yorkers have to suffer a delay of a year to ensure that something forward-looking is built at 41st and 10th, the subway-riding public would be better off for it.

Vaguely, Spinola, whose organization didn’t realize for years that the station at 41st and 10th had been axed, ended with some words about the city’s trying to “find a solution.” He said, “At the moment, I think they are taking the concern seriously that the station will not get built unless they do something about it, and I think they are exploring the possibilities.” How comforting.