The MTA has scheduled hearings in May (the 12^th and 13^th, see calendar) for input on the recently released supplemental draft environmental impact statement for the Second Avenue subway project. The supplement to the EIS considers the elements for subway construction along the entire 125^th Street-lower Manhattan route. The original draft only considered a 125^th St.-63^rd St. project, that would link into the Broadway tunnel, but that was disparaged by many constituencies as a "stub-way" that would fail to meet the East Side’s needs or significantly unburden much of the jam-packed Lexington Avenue line.

Main features of the line would be 16 stations along the East Side, with likely connections to the Lexington line at 125^th Street, the E/V at 53^rd Street, the #7 at 42^nd Street, the L at 14^th St., the F/V at Houston St. and the B/D at Grand Street. Stations would be along Second Avenue and on Water Street in lower Manhattan. A track connection at 63^rd Street would allow service between upper Second Avenue and the Broadway Line, continuing to Brooklyn. It could also permit a new service between Queens and lower Manhattan, though the EIS summary says this could depend on other service reconfigurations or future expansion of the Queens subway network. The line would also be constructed to allow future direct extensions into the Bronx and Brooklyn.

The supplemental draft EIS is available on-line atwww.mta.info/planning/sas/. Hard copies are available at most Manhattan libraries and at all Manhattan community board offices, as well as several other locations.

Transit sources and Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields – a major backer of the plan – told reporters the Second Avenue line is scheduled for groundbreaking at the end of 2004.

We hope they are right, but funding the project will be a big issue for years to come. Although the MTA’s 2000-2004 capital plan included $1 billion for Second Avenue subway design and early construction work, overall construction could cost up to $16 billion.

A February Federal Transit Administration report on "new start" transit projects underway around the country raised an eyebrow toward Second Avenue subway finances. The project’s "cost effectiveness" rating was given as "low," although it still received an overall "recommended" stamp and a small amount of FTA funding. The finding could add to New York’s struggle to win major federal funding for the Second Avenue line in competition with other projects around the country. In any event, New York and the MTA will have to come up with a lot of local money to build it.

But in fairness to the project and the MTA, the FTA "new starts" ranking criteria emphasize attraction of new transit riders, and are thus stacked against system expansion projects within mature transit systems. It would be a major victory for New York’s and other urban legislators to fix this problem in this year’s pending six-year federal transportation funding bill. The FTA report also pegged the start-date of revenue service on the Second Avenue line as 2021.

The same FTA paper recommended a "full funding grant agreement" between the FTA and MTA for construction of the LIRR East Side Access project, which will connect the railroad to Grand Central Terminal. Such an agreement commits the FTA to a multi-year funding effort to see the project through. The FTA recommended $75 million in federal funding for this year. East Side Access is expected to be operating by 2012.

For Connecticut, the report refused to issue a rating for the Hartford-New Britain busway, a bus rapid transit project in a rail corridor south of Hartford. It stated that the FTA has "serious concerns" about cost-effectiveness information submitted by ConnDOT, and says it is trying to resolve issues connected with assumptions and calculations regarding the project’s expected benefits.

In New Jersey, FTA full funding grant agreements are already in place for the Hudson-Bergen and Newark-Elizabeth light rail projects. 

MTR search facility and back issues:

Search our database of all past issues of Mobilizing the Region since Fall, 1994.

Go to index of all Mobilizing the Region back issues