The 485-ton machine that’s been boring southward through the ground below Second Avenue since last May has completed the west tunnel for the future subway line that will, by 2016, extend from 63rd Street to 96th Street as part of the Q train, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced last Friday. That 7,200-foot tunnel will ultimately become part of the Second Avenue Subway — but for now, the MTA is focusing on what it calls “Phase I,” which is the Q train extension. Next up for the massive tunnel boring machine is getting disassembled and moving back to 92nd Street. From there, it will again head south to create the east tunnel. TRD

Renderings of the utility structure planned for outside the 96th Street station of the under-construction Second Avenue subway

From the December issue: Those sticky summers languishing on the platform will be obsolete for future riders of the Second Avenue subway. Unlike most city subway stations, where air is sucked through sidewalk grates by passing trains, the new stations will be chilled by a modern ventilation system.

But much to the dismay of some Upper East Siders, that ventilation system will be housed in permanent aboveground utility structures situated at each end of the stations, many as large as midsize apartment buildings, rising up to nine stories tall.

As part of its first phase of Second Avenue subway construction, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning eight of these structures along a 34-block stretch of the Upper East Side. [more]