# NYC 2nd Ave. Subway Progress



## WhoozOn1st (Aug 6, 2012)

It has to come from a best coast New York Times subscriber, huh? 

New York Times Sunday Magazine article, slide show (good photos!), and video on the progress of Manhattan's long delayed 2nd Avenue subway.

Story: Tunneling Below Second Avenue

"In Manhattan, where street traffic tends to stall, only one subway runs the length of the East Side. Every weekday, 1.3 million passengers — more than are carried in 24 hours by the transit systems of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco combined — cram onto the Lexington Avenue line. Yet the chaos above and below has inspired afeat: about 475 laborers are now removing 15 million cubic feet of rock and 6 million cubic feet of soil — more than half an Empire State Building by volume — out from under two miles of metropolis. In December 2016, that tunnel will make its debut as a portion of the Second Avenue subway — the great failed track New York City has been postponing, restarting, debating, financing, definancing and otherwise meaning to get in the ground since 1929."

Slide Show: Way Down in the Hole

Video: The Once and Future Dream of New York


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## The Davy Crockett (Aug 6, 2012)

WhoozOn1st said:


> It has to come from a best coast New York Times subscriber, huh?


That is because it is three hours earlier on the left coast.  :lol:

Nice links. The images are surreal. Thanks for sharing.


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## Trogdor (Aug 6, 2012)

WhoozOn1st said:


> Every weekday, 1.3 million passengers — more than are carried in 24 hours by the transit systems of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco combined


That is an incorrect statement (if, by "transit system," one does not mean exclusively rail).

Chicago Transit Authority carries around 1.7-1.8 million passengers per weekday. I don't know the exact breakdown, but a few years ago, the bus-to-rail ratio was 2:1. It might have closed a little bit in favor of rail.


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## trainman74 (Aug 7, 2012)

In the New York Transit Museum last month, I noticed that their store was already selling a baseball cap with the 2nd Avenue line logo on it (a turquoise "T") along with the baseball caps with all the other line logos.


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## NY Penn (Aug 7, 2012)

They've been selling t-shirts with the




symbol for a while now. Honestly, the way things are going, there's not going to be a



for a very long time.

It's an interesting question - how come it's taking so long to build this line (around 10 years for 2 miles for the first segment)? NY's first subway was 9 miles long and was built in four years. While of course, nobody's going to do cut-and-cover on 2 Av today, it still shouldn't take this long.


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## DET63 (Aug 10, 2012)

> In December 2016, that tunnel will make its debut as a portion of the Second Avenue subway — the great failed track New York City has been postponing, restarting, debating, financing, definancing and otherwise meaning to get in the ground since 1929.


Based on the history presented in the article, as well as on comments from other posters, all I can say is: don't bet on it.


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## jis (Jan 7, 2022)

Well, looks like the next phase of its extension may get rolling soon. Sorry for digging up an ancient thread, but this project has been going on for a while. The originator of this thread brings back memories of the Fez. 









N.Y. keeps rail momentum going, advances Second Avenue Subway expansion project - Railway Track and Structures


New York keeps the rail momentum going by advancing the Second Avenue Subway expansion project, which is now in the engineering phase.




www.rtands.com


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## George Harris (Mar 16, 2022)

10 years is not ancient when it concerns the Second Avenue Subway. From the January article in Railway Track and Structures:

Phase 1 of the project extended the Q line from 63rd Street to 96th Street opened on January 1, 2017, with additional stations at 72nd Street and 86th Street. 

Phase 2 extends train service from 96th Street north to 125th Street, approximately 1.5 miles; 

Now, here is the kicker: "A tunnel segment that will be used for Phase 2 was built in the 1970s from 110th Street to 120th Street along Second Avenue."

In other words, over half the distance used in this extension has been in the ground for 50 years! This whole Second Avenue Subway thing caught my eye because I remember first reading about its imminent construction while I was a Civil Engineering major college student. Now let's see when that was. Oh yeah! I graduated in 1968. I don't recall now what the urgency was that got this disconnected segment built, but it should up near the top of the list of things built followed by postponement of parts needed to make it usable.


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## joelkfla (Mar 16, 2022)

George Harris said:


> I don't recall now what the urgency was that got this disconnected segment built, but it should up near the top of the list of things built followed by postponement of parts needed to make it usable.


I don't think there was any particular urgency. It was probably being built under a series of separate contracts, and the 105th to 110th St. segment simply hadn't been started yet when the city ran out of money. It didn't matter in what order the segments were built, as the whole thing was expected to open in 10 years.

From NY Times November 20, 1978:

"No construction has been done on the line since September 1975, when Mayor Abraham D. Beame ordered construction halted during the city fiscal crisis on the only four segments that had been started — 99th to 105th Street, 110th to 120th Street, Second to Ninth Street and two blocks under the Manhattan Bridge Plaza."


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## neroden (Mar 19, 2022)

The Second Avenue Subway was originally planned in the *1920s*, so it's been a very long time coming. Became much more important when city government ripped out the Els, however.


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