Manhattan

A glimpse into the refurbished South Ferry loop station. (Photo courtesy of MTA)

In a few days — some indeterminate time next week — the MTA will recommission an old station when the 1 train’s old South Ferry loop station reopens. With a new connection to the R train at Whitehall and some restored mosaic work, the reopened southern terminal will be just good enough, if far from perfect.

Late yesterday, the agency posted a series of photos ahead of next week’s reopening. There is still no set date for the first train to service South Ferry, but it’s going to arrive as April does. Staten Island Ferry customers will rejoice, but the station will come with warts and all. It’s still just a five-car loop; it still isn’t ADA-compliant; it still features narrow platforms and few egress points. Yet, a subway station is a subway station is a subway station, and with the new South Ferry terminal years away from restoration, reactivating the loop is a welcome move.

So what exactly goes into restoring a subway station not in service for nearly four years? From the mundane to the intricate, the MTA offered up a checklist. Cleaning, of course, is top on the list as is painting and installing new signage, electricity, better lighting and a PA system. The MTA had to refurbish the gap fillers, repair wall tiles, build a new staircase and entryway, repair some escalators and reinstate fare control and the station entrance. It’s quite the laundry list of tasks, and it all happened within five months of Sandy.

So as I ponder these photos and the station virtually on the eve of its reopening, I have to wonder why everything else in the subway system seems to take so long. With right pressure from Board members and politicians, the MTA reconstructed South Ferry in a few months. Everything else seems to take forever.

Via Second Ave. Sagas on Instagram.

We know the old South Ferry loop is set to reopen in April, and all signs are pointing to this impending recommissioning. While exiting at Times Square this afternoon, I spotted the above sign hanging on the wall. It’s a familiar one to riders of the 1 train, and it serves as a reminder that we’re getting back an old station with all of its warts.

This sign will soon be going up in 1 trains across the city, and although it has a few more languages and some snazzy colors at the top, it’s a throwback to the days before the new South Ferry terminal opened. There’s still no official timeline on the when the new station will be rebuilt and rehabilitated, but at least ferry-bound riders and those trying to reach Battery Park will have convenient West Side subway service starting in just a few weeks.

With the new South Ferry terminal out of service for the foreseeable future, Staten Island politicians and MTA Board members called upon the agency to do something for those heading to and from the ferry terminal building. Although the MTA has resisted putting a public timeline on any action, work crews have spent the last few weeks doing, well, something to the old one-track South Ferry loop station.

The above video hit the Internet yesterday. One SubChat poster rode the 1 south from Rector St. and through the loop in an effort to check out just what’s been going on there. The videographer has shot two scenes down there in recent works, and it’s clear that some sort of assessment is going on. The gap-fillers are reportedly in place, but there has been no word of operating conditions. Crews have been seemingly trying to maximize space as well, and a photo reportedly of a new entrance made the rounds recently too.

I reached out to the MTA for comment on the old South Ferry loop and was told that the agency is, in the words of a spokesperson, “still assessing” the situation. There is, in other words, no official decision one way or another. Reopening the old loop would not preclude restoring the new station, and the MTA fully plans to do so. It would mean, however, service to and from South Ferry only in the first five cars of the 1 train, no wheelchair access to the station and creaky gap-fillers at a station smaller than anyone would prefer.

But train service to South Ferry in any way, shape or form, and we’ll know soon if this work is for the reactivation of revenue service at the 1 train’s old haunt or not.

The rezoning of Midtown East seems to be a hot topic these days. As the mayoral race disappointingly heats up and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s last few months in office start to melt away, the mayor is going to try to push through this rezoning plan in an effort to grow the amount of office space available around Grand Central. It’s transit-oriented development at its best, but, as I noted last week, the transit element seems to be missing.

At the time, the big issues surrounded the MTA’s vague threat of needing to close stations. With overcrowding concerns along narrow platforms on the East Side, without transit investments, the agency said it would, in the future, have to consider limiting access at certain times of the day. Of course, this “threat” came amidst concerns over subway platform safety, and what better way to ensure that platforms are safe than limiting the number of people on them?

In reality, though, that’s neither here nor there. There are legitimate concerns with crowd and capacity levels at stations that would be directly impacted by any rezoning plan pushed through over the next 10 months. The Times has recently chimed in on this issue as well. Their unsigned editorial raises some general concerns about the politics of rezoning, but as a supporter of upzoning and an opponent of New York City’s snail-paced planning process, I’m less concerned about that than I am of the transit element.

To that end, Juliet Lapidos chimed in with a “Taking Note” blog post on the topic that will unfortunately not see the pages of a printed newspaper. She writes of the need to focus below-ground as well:

Michael Bloomberg, has been warning that New York could lose its wealthiest corporate tenants to cities like London and Hong Kong and Tokyo. But he’s not especially concerned about the city’s rickety infrastructure. He’s worried that our buildings aren’t tall enough, and wants to rezone the city’s premier business area, East Midtown, to encourage development of larger, more modern skyscrapers. If you work in the Chrysler Building, you might see new towers rise above its spire…

But the mayor’s current plan doesn’t really grapple with the problems below ground. Tentative proposals for improving the East Midtown transit situation are unambitious. Forget linking Manhattan directly to its airports — a New York version of the Heathrow Express or the Narita Express. The M.T.A.’s focused on crowd circulation: Increasing capacity on platforms, ameliorating pathways between lines, reconfiguring exits, installing escalators.

That’s not nothing. Better stations will mean commuters can move faster from train to street. If there’s less crowding on platforms, the M.T.A. can run more trains. (Currently there are long “dwell times” in East Midtown because frantic passengers squeeze into trains and block the doors.) Still, none of the authority’s concepts seem designed to address the fact that the area’s main line, the 4/5/6, is already above capacity. As for the long-promised Second Avenue subway, which should eventually reduce overcrowding: The city has financing to complete only phase one of that project, an extension of the Q up to 96th street.

Lapidos notes, as did I, that the MTA’s modest improvements will cost upwards of $460 million in today’s money, but that $460 million doesn’t go too far. It doesn’t bring the Second Ave. Subway past growing job centers east of Grand Central, and it’s unclear how the funds would be guaranteed. The money likely wouldn’t be in place to give the MTA enough lead time to expand capacity ahead of any rezoning and upbuilding. So further overcrowding is likely anyway.

As Lapidos says, “There’s nothing wrong with building taller, newer towers to make sure the business community doesn’t decamp for Tokyo, but surely if we want to compete with Tokyo we have to make sure tenants can easily get to their taller, newer towers.” Transit cannot be an afterthought in a comprehensive rezoning package. It must take center stage. For without transit investments and improvements, no one will be able to travel to the job center atop the center of New York’s economic universe.

For six months toward the end of 2011 and into 2012, my offices were located a short walk away from Grand Central, and every day, I took the subway through this den of people. The Grand Central subway station on the Lexington Avenue IRT is not particularly well designed. It’s crammed with subway riders, and due to the numerous staircases, there’s not a lot of platform space. Between the crowds slowly trudging up the stairs and people waiting for trains, it can often seem unsafely overcrowded.

It may get even worse. With Mayor Bloomberg attempting to fast-track a plan to rezone Midtown East, the area around Grand Central could see a rapid expansion in the amount of available office space. Already, sidewalks are too narrow and pedestrian areas very limited. But nothing is quite as bad as that Grand Central subway space, and if the city is to rezone the neighborhood, it must be careful attention to the needs of the area’s subway riders.

In a January Community Board 5 meeting, the city presented its latest plans for Midtown East, and as the DNA Info write-up noted, these plans include a call for transit investment. Matthew Katz reports:

City planners unveiled a revised East Midtown rezoning plan Tuesday that excludes a small segment of streets from the proposal and requires developers to chip in to a fund for transit improvements — before they can get a building permit…

Developers also would have to pay into the District Improvement Fund before getting building permits — instead of when they received the permits, city officials said. Critics said that’s still no guarantee the cash needed to improve the area would be raised, or that enough developers will even decide to bite. “We don’t know when development is going to occur and we need these improvements now,” [CB 5 Board member Raju] Mann said.

The improvements eyed include new escalators, stairs, passageways and space on platforms at some of Midtown’s most congested subway stations. The upgrades, estimated to cost between $340 million and $465 million, would focus on the train lines at Grand Central, the Fifth Avenue/53rd Street Station and Lexington Avenue/53rd Street Station.

Full plans for these stations haven’t been released, but we do know, for instance, that the MTA wants to reconfigure how people use Grand Central. As an example, the MTA sees transfer times of about 125 seconds for those traveling between the 7 line and the Lexington Ave. trains when that time should be closer to 45 seconds. More stairs and a wider mezzanine at Grand Central are on the agenda.

But what happens if the MTA doesn’t see these changes realized? That’s the headline of the day as officials told CB5 members back in October that if the re-zoning goes through without transit improvements, the MTA may have to consider temporary station closures during crush load times. Similar practices are at play throughout the world. Essentially, as The Post’s David Seifman noted, the MTA would consider closing some entrances at certain hours of the day to better control for people flow.

The MTA made clear that this is a less-than-ideal long-term solution. “There is zero risk that we will have to start closing entrances tomorrow or anything like that,” agency spokesman Adam Lisberg said The Post. Still, the MTA would need political support and a significant monetary investment to see these changes realized.

While the funds needed are likely to be included in one of the next five-year capital plans, it is an open question of how long the MTA can wait. Council member Dan Garodnik said, “There are infrastructure needs that we have today — even putting aside adding four million square feet of new commercial development and 8,000 people who are anticipated coming into Grand Central for the first time.” Essentially, then, any rezoning must pay special attention to the transit needs. Not doing so could lead to calamitous overcrowding and very frustrated subway riders.

Just in case you haven’t gotten your fill of water-logged subway stations over the past few months, New York City’s aging utilities have decided to grace us with another one. This morning, a 100-year-old water main near Madison Square Park broke, flooding the 23rd St. station on the BMT Broadway line. The MTA’s Leonard Wiggins was on hand to record the above video.

Not surprisingly, as of around 2:45 p.m., the water main break has snarled service along the N, Q and R trains. There are no N and Q trains between DeKalb Ave. and 57th St., and there are no R trains along the Broadway line between Queens Plaza and Whitehall St. Rather, R trains are running on the F from 36th St. to Herald Square and then along the D to DeKalb Ave. In its understated way, the MTA urges customers to “allow additional travel time.”

Rush hour could be a bit bumpy. According to Matt Flegenheimer of The Times water topped the third rail for about 1000 feet near the 23rd St. station, and the MTA still has to clean up. Once the station is pumped dry, crews will inspect tracks and signals before running test trains. On the slightly optimistic side, at least this flooding was not an inundation of corrosive salt water. Whatever deposits sit in a century-old pipe must be somewhat less destructive than the ocean.