Broadway/Lafayette – Bleecker St.

Photo by Benjamin Kabak. Click to enlarge.

I found myself this afternoon waiting for an uptown 6 train at Bleecker St. The blue construction door, hiding the southern extension of the uptown platform, was locked, but I could see through a hole in the fence. Using my cell phone camera, I snuck a photo in before the 6 train arrived.

The Broadway/Lafayette-Bleecker St. rehab is an extensive one. The station will soon be ADA-compliant, and the uptown 6 platform will be connected to the rest of the complex via a mezzanine that runs under the IRT tracks. Currently, straphangers can transfer from the 6th Ave. B/D/F/M trains only to the downtown 6. To accomplish this new crossover, the uptown platform is being extended a few hundred feet south, and that’s what you see above.

Work at the station has moved relatively slowly. We glimpsed the first renderings in late May of 2007 and saw some cross-section diagrams in mid-2009. Last year, Transit went behind the blue fence and sent out some official updates. The $94 million project is still set to wrap by November of this year.

For decades, the subway stop at Broadway-Lafayette St./Bleecker St. has been the source of transfer-inspired madness. Due to the oddities of original construction, eventual station expansion and system integration, the complex — the only in-system transfer point in Manhattan between the IND Sixth Ave. line and the Lexington Ave. IRT line — has sported a unidirectional transfer. Passengers can go between the downtown IRT and the IND platforms without exiting but must utilize an out-of-system transfer and an above-ground walk to travel between the uptown IRT and IND platforms.

In 2005, before the days of Second Ave. Sagas, the MTA proposed fixing this annoyance. The plans — which I explored in 2007 — include extending the uptown IRT platform southward by 300 feet so that it will align properly with the downtown platform and IND transfer point. The mezzanine connecting the IRT with the IND will be extended east, and the entire station will be made ADA-compliant. In 2009, as the project got off the ground, I went in depth on the design of the renovated station. These renovations were a long time coming.

Today, as part of its glimpse at weekend work, New York City Transit, via its Twitter account, posted some photographic updates of the work in progress. According to Transit, the $94 million renovation project is 35 percent complete and is still scheduled for a late 2011 completion date.

As for the photos, the shot above shows Transit contractors working to extend the uptown 6 station southward. After the jump, photos and a video of the work in progress. All come courtesy of the MTA and New York City Transit.