There were few surprises in testimony at recent hearings regarding the draft environmental impact statement for the Second Avenue subway.

The project’s well-known boosters among elected officialdom, such as Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, were on hand to urge it forward. Representatives of groups from the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn urged that project plans include extensions or connecting services to ensure that benefits extend beyond Manhattan. There were understandable grumblings about construction impacts, though even many expressing these said the new line was in the city’s long-term interest.

Points from testimony by the Regional Plan Association’s transportation expert Jeffrey Zupan provide a useful overview of project benefits, and of the potential pitfalls that the Second Avenue subway project could face as it makes the transition from planning to construction. These bear recounting here:

On the plus side, the MTA has made a major step in adopting a full-length Manhattan line as its preferred alternative, discarding the widely criticized "stub-way" (125^th-63^rd Street) plan proposed in the 1999 draft environmental impact statement. The subway will bring significant benefits to East Harlem — better connections to lower Manhattan and other job sites — especially the string of hospital sites along the East Side. The two new services the plan will create — along 2nd Avenue and from upper 2nd Avenue to the Broadway express tracks — will create new options for riders seeking to get downtown, a feature consistent with lower Manhattan recovery efforts. And the line’s attraction of East Harlem and Upper East Side riders away from the Lexington Avenue line will help others from around the city and the region, especially Bronx riders and Hudson Valley commuters switching from Metro-North trains.

RPA urged the MTA to undertake several additional planning tasks, from the regional to the local. First, collaborative community planning on station design and function can help neighborhoods determine how the station areas will develop. More broadly, the MTA should begin formal consideration of connecting services from the boroughs, including through service from Queens subways and eventual tunnel extensions in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Otherwise, the city and the region will not use the huge investment in 2nd Avenue subway construction to its full potential. "The SAS should interconnect major portions of Brooklyn to the east side of Manhattan (now often a difficult subway trip). It should be the means to establish subway service to large expanses of un-served areas in the south Bronx, Co-op City, Southeast Queens and the Lower East Side," RPA testified.

A four-borough service plan would have these features:

• Extension of 2nd Avenue service through a new tunnel to Brooklyn,, with conversion of the LIRR Atlantic branch to subway service to Jamaica. The line would also allow one-seat rides from JFK to downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.

• A four-track 2nd Avenue subway segment between 43^rd and Delancey Streets, with a spur into Grand Central, to allow connections with Metro-North and Queens and Lower East Side subways.

To avoid the pitfall of building the "stub-way" with available funding and then having the rest of the plan founder on financial shoals, the MTA should clearly outline its plans for project phasing and financing now so that scenarios and consequences of less than full funding can be considered and debated before ground is broken.

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