Second Ave. Sagas

Category: MTA Construction

  • NYCT to Shuttle Riders: Keep on minding the gap, buddy

    The 42nd Street shuttle awaits passengers while sitting on the Track 3 curve at Times Square. (Courtesy of flickr user gsdali)

    In certain stations in the London Underground, a soothing voice with a slight British accent repeats ad nausea to passengers, “Mind the gap.” These stations sit on steep curves in the tracks that lead to a separation of more than a few centimetres between the platform and car edge, and the phrase has taken on a cultural significance that sees it printed on t-shirts and mugs all over London.

    In New York, the MTA ignores the gap problem and pushes off necessary repairs for years in order to prioritize other capital projects. As part of the never-ending Times Square rehabilitation project, the MTA planned to fix the gap problem that led to a whopping 12 personal injury claims over the course of five years ending in 2005. But now, the MTA, already searching for solutions to the LIRR gap problem, won’t mind this gap until at least 2010, amNew York reports.

    while the MTA worked to renovate much of the Times Square station during the same [five-year] period it quietly decided last year to postpone work on the Shuttle platform until the 2010-14 capital plan is implemented.

    “It’s a shame that they pushed it back. It’s like renovating your house and leaving the entrance the same,” said MTA board member Andrew Albert.

    The gaps in question — those on Shuttle Track 3 measure up to 14 inches or eight inches more than the accepted six-inch MTA gap — came about because the 42nd Street Shuttle runs on the original IRT route. At 42nd St., the route curved from an east-west track along the Avenue I’m Taking You To to head up north on 7th Ave. The stop at what was never Longacre Square — that name went out of fashion in April of 1904, six months before the first IRT train pulled in to Times Squares — ended up on that curve that brought the train north. And thus there is a gap that must be minded.

    While platform extenders make it somewhat less dangerous, the ones in Times Square are underneath the platform unlike the giant noisy sliding things at South Ferry and Union Square. So people still trip, fall and tumble out of wheelchairs. The MTA has taken steps to solve this problem.

    Those steps? Said NYCT spokesman Paul Fleuranges to amNY: “We just ask our customers to use the gap fillers and where not possible, take their time and be mindful of the gap.” So, uh, pretty please, don’t trip.

  • MTA ready to grant ‘T’ for 2

    Boston has it’s T. Philadelphia’s two-line subway system looks like a T. And now, after nearly eight decades in the making New York will be getting its own T line.

    That’s right; the MTA is set to sign a contract on my birthday – March 29 – for construction of the oft-delayed Second Avenue subway line, amNew York reported this morning.

    Elliot “Lee” Sander, the MTA’s new executive director, and Chairman Peter Kalikow will approve the $333 million contract for the first phase of the project that critics thought would never happen…

    Almost immediately after the contract is signed, construction trailers will start to line parts of Second Avenue in the East 90s, MTA officials said.

    The groundbreaking ceremony, along with actual digging, is scheduled for late April or early May. The exact location has not been determined.

    This announcement comes a week after Kalikow noted the inevitability of the new subway line. Construction will begin nearly immediately after the contract is signed in a few weeks, and the so-called T train will be the first new subway line built in over 60 years. But hold on to your hats, folks.

    This part of the Second Ave. subway line, schedule for completion in 2013, will contain a whopping three new stations. The new stops will be at 96th St., 86th St. and 72nd St. with a connection to the current stop at 63rd St. before the T joins the Q for a trip down to Lower Manhattan. As the diagram above notes, the tunnel north of 96th St. still exists from other failed attempts to build the Second Avenue line and will figure into phase 2 of this project.

    (more…)

  • Queens bars hoping for 7 delays for St. Pat’s

    If you understand that disaster, you must be some kind of supergenius.

    For two weeks, residents of Queens have been up in arms over the construction on the 7 line. Who can blame them? The MTA workers barely know what the alternate routes are, and getting to Manhattan from parts of the 7 line now takes up to three or four times longer than usual.

    When the Authority originally announced the construction plans, Irish travelers complained that they would be unable to join the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Manhattan. Now, MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander has announced that 7 train may run in Queens on March 17. Or maybe not. amNY reports:

    Elliot “Lee” Sander, the MTA executive director and chief executive, said Wednesday that weekend service on the No. 7 train could be restored for the March 17 holiday, which falls on a Saturday. “We are looking at that,” he said after the MTA’s monthly board meeting Wednesday, but made it clear no decision has been made.

    He added that the MTA is examining how service on the E and R lines and the Long Island Rail Road could pick up the slack for the thousands of revelers traveling to the parade. One scenario will let subway riders use the LIRR stop at Woodside.

    But there’s an interesting twist to this story: Irish drinking establishments that are due for a big St. Patrick’s Day boon are torn about the service cuts to the 7 train.

    The Irish bars in the Woodside area would see an increase in visitors for a big day of drinking if revelers can’t make it into Manhattan. So for once, maybe some people in Queens actually want the service changes to go in effect. Oh, the irony.

    Update: Chuck Bennett at the amNY Subway Tracker Blog confirms that 7 service will be restored for St. Patrick’s Day. As an added benefit fewer, drunken partiers will be driving as they can now ride the train home in peace.

  • MTA proceeding with 7 line extension process, for now

    The saga of the 7 line extension continues. A few weeks after MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander announced that the project was on hold while the city’s contributions to cost overruns was in question, the Transit Authority is proceeding apace with the project, funding be damned. For now.

    On Tuesday, the MTA awarded its first contracts for the project to extend the reach of the purple 7 to 34th St. and 11th Ave. But despite this allocation, the MTA is still proceeding with caution as the project may still exceed the $2.1 billion allocated for it by New York City. No one yet knows who will shoulder the burden for cost overruns.

    Metro, one of New York City’s two free dailies, reports on the developments:

    It’s full steam ahead for the 7 line extension — at least for now — as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a $35.8 million contract yesterday for a construction manager to oversee the project.

    But the new subway plan could be stopped in its tracks as early as this summer if the first round of construction bids comes in too high, warned Mysore Nagaraja, the head of MTA Capital Construction. The city is giving $2.1 billion for the 7 line extension, which will run from Times Square to Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street. Yet fears of cost overruns have led to finger-pointing between the city and the MTA over who would be stuck paying a higher final tab.

    Nagaraja was quoted in numerous news sources this evening as taking something of a hard line against the city’s refusal to cover cost overruns. “Right now, based on our estimate, we are within the 2.1,” he said, “but let’s see what happens with the proposals. We’re going to know whether we are under the budget or we’re going to be way over. At that time, decisions will have to be made between the city and the MTA as to whether we want to proceed with this.”

    So we’re at a standstill but not. The MTA is proceeding with caution as it approaches a project the City it would fund and then later added a caveat of $2.1 billion. I’m afriad we’ll see a shell station at 10th and 41st St. that will never be completed and a less-than-satisfactory resolution to this process. Maybe the City and the MTA can reach a compromise, but history is not on the side of a compromise between these two stubborn governing bodies.

  • Queens residents up in arms over 7 line debacle

    I don’t know what any of that means either. Or as my roomate said, “What the f***?” (Image courtesy of flickr user Plaid Ninja. Click on it for a bigger view.)

    So the 7 train. Apparently, it’s a mess, and Queens residents aren’t too happy. I don’t blame them; that service advisory note up there is utterly incomprehensible.

    Currently, the 7 line is undergoing a massive reconstruction project. According to the WNBC report, the MTA is reconfiguring the tracks and upgrading switches from Times Square out to the heart of Queens. Because the 7 is the only line that runs from Manhattan to Flushing, it clearly inconveniences everyone who lives along this purple train.

    Furthermore, I’m a firm believer in conspiracy theories. The MTA is doing the project now, in the cold of winter when no one wants to walk anywhere, because baseball season is around the corner. Imagine if tens of thousands of Mets fans could not get to Shea for opening weekend because of 7 line service shutdowns. Queens residents suffer now so baseball fans don’t have to suffer in April.

    The litany of complains are quite familiar. Travel times are quadrupled; local businesses are feeling the pain; and everyone is pissed off. In fact, even City Council member Eric Giola participated in a rally protesting the service cuts. He called the shuttle bus service “insufficient and inconvenient.” You tell ’em, Eric.

    Uncharacteristically, the MTA decided to listen to their riders’ complaints. How? By, um, telling people more frequently how to find some alternate route and, ah, making sure the employees are giving out the right information (which they were not last weekend). The Daily News reports on the new measures the MTA will take this weekend:

    • Boosting the number of service-disruption announcements at stations and on subway trains.
    • Putting more and better-informed Transit Authority personnel in stations to help lost and confused riders.
    • Alerting riders that they can board No. 7 trains, and get off Manhattan-bound trains at the 69th St. and 61st St. stations. The TA has been telling riders that trains weren’t running between Times Square and 74th St./Broadway.
    • Better publicize increased E and F train service on the affected weekends.
    • Increasing the number of supervisors to improve coordination of TA efforts.
    • Additional training and better info packets for bus drivers, station agents and other workers on the disruptions and travel options.

    Pardon me if I’m a little skeptical, but doesn’t this seem like basic levels of customer service? Shouldn’t the MTA have made sure that its employees knew what was going on before the service cuts instead of after a debacle of a weekend? While Giola expressed his pleasure with the new customer service measures, I expect this weekend to be more of the same for those residents in Queens unlucky enough to live on the 7 line.

    But don’t worry; baseball season is right around the corner.

  • It’s Saturday on Monday for NYC Transit

    It’s Presidents’ Day, and I’m on the road this weekend. So posting is light. I’ll be back on Tuesday with a full day of subway news and notes. For now, just remember that today — Monday — is a special Monday. The trains are running on a Saturday schedule, and nothing is as it seems.

    So after a weekend that saw Queens residents up in arms over 7 train problems, good luck getting around. The West Side IRT lines are very messed up right now, and they’re not the only ones. For more, check out the MTA’s weekend service advisories. Most of the service problems from the weekend carry through until 5 a.m. on Tuesday.

  • Subway construction plans in jeopardy

    subwaymap.jpg

    Long before he took office, New York’s new governor, Eliot Spitzer, had championed capital construction projects aimed toward improving the state’s transportation infrastructure. High on that list of priorities was the Second Ave. subway.

    Even at such an early stage, the funding for Spitzer’s goals was far from assured. Upstate representatives to Albany were concerned about funneling so much into a city-centric agency such as the MTA, and the billions of dollars needed to complete the first stage of the Second Ave. subway and the Grand Central-LIRR link were never going to be easy to find.

    Now, just a few weeks into Spitzer’s term as governor, the financial outlook for these projects does not look too rosy. In fact, to survive the cutting board, Spitzer may need to step in and deliver the big bucks for the MTA because the MTA’s debt problem may mean yet another postponement for these much-needed projects. The Times Ledger reports:

    The problem is that the MTA’s capital program, which runs through 2009 is running over budget by at least $1.4 billion, according to a report first published by the New York Times. As result of heavy borrowing, the MTA faces years of enormous debt starting next year.

    The $21 billion program is supposed to provide for not only what the MTA calls its mega projects Ð the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access to bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal but also the purchase of hundreds of new rail cars and the improvement of signal systems and other subway equipment.

    Accordingly, Elliott Sander, the new executive director and CEO of the MTA, will do what heads of bureaucracies do best: appoint a committee. After last week’s The Times’ report, Sander decided to investigate the claims made concerning the MTA’s financials. While he and MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow are skeptical of the alleged $1.4 billion overrun, Sander did note that some of the bigger projects could be put on the back burner while routine maintenance demands are met.

    For those in New York who have been waiting decades for the Second Ave. subway, it would come as no surprise if this project is delayed yet again. But with the federal government kicking in some money for the Second Ave. subway, I would be surprised to see this new subway delayed yet again. Optimism may reign supreme in hoping for the arrival of a subway line 70 years in the planning.

  • 7 line service interruptions to inconvenience everyone

    The 7 line, immortalized by John Rocker, is one of the most popular and important subway lines for the city. It transports hundreds of thousands of passengers from Flushing through Queens into the heart of midtown Manhattan with connections to nearly every other subway line along the way.

    And now the MTA will be shutting it down on weekends for the next few weeks as the line is set to undergo some major maintenance and signal work. Riders are none too pleased either because this 7 shut-down will interfere with the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day parade as well. The Daily News reports:

    Starting Feb. 10 and continuing for the following six weekends, the No. 7 will be largely shut down as Transit Authority crews do signal and track work, officials said.

    The first weekend there will be no trains between Times Square and Queensboro Plaza. After that, there will be no trains from 74th St./Broadway in Queens to Times Square.

    TA spokesman Paul Fleuranges said the work is part of the agency’s long-term plan for maintenance and upgrades, including replacing tracks, signals and rickety trains.

    Riders in Queens are upset because the work is scheduled to run through March. Thus, Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Day parade will be largely inaccessible unless the 250,000 weekend 7 train riders who live in Queens want to take two trains or a shuttle bus.

    What the article doesn’t mention is the poor timing of this event for the new exhibits at the Queens Museum of Art. Just this past weekend, in conjunction with the city-wide Robert Moses exhibit, the Queens Museum reopened the amazing panorama of New York after a $750,000 renovation project. Since the 7 train services the museum, visitors — such as, well, me — won’t be able to go for a few weeks.

    While folks in Queens are complaining about the work schedule, the truth of the matter is that these upgrades had to be done now. With baseball season right around the corner, the MTA is under the gun to get the 7 train up and running on the weekends before April 14 when the Mets square off against the Nationals in their first weekend home game of the 2007 season. For once, the MTA might actually complete a construction project on schedule.