Today, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will finish tunneling the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trains won’t be running on the new subway line for at least five years, but that’s just a blip in the long history of the project, which was first proposed in the 1920s and has been kicked around ever since. [more]
The life of the the rocks being dug up as part of the Second Avenue Subway construction does not end on Second Avenue. Instead, the rocks have become part of an ecosystem as they are being used in construction projects around the New York and New Jersey region, WNYC reported. Contractor Skanska has an agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Administration to transport the rocks off-site to Newark. There, at Armored Recycling, the “mole rock” is turned into usable construction material using a machine called the jaw crusher.
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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is banning underground
blasting along the Second Avenue Subway construction site in the night time after 7 p.m. starting
today, the New York Times reported, in response to noise complaints
from residents and community leaders.
The project’s contract
originally allowed the blasts until midnight, although MTA construction
chief Michael Horodniceanu said they usually stopped by 9 p.m. The
blasts (listen in video above) are necessary to remove underground rock for construction
of the three new stations that will serve the route, at 96th, 86th and 72nd streets. [more]
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed increasing its debt plan to $6.9 billion for its preliminary 2010 to 2014 capital budget at its board meeting this morning, GlobeSt.com reported. Those funds will be one part of the MTA’s $24 billion total capital program, as it seeks to close a $9 billion budget gap, after it already cut $2 billion from the budget last week. The MTA has also considered selling its real estate assets — like its Madison Avenue headquarters — to offset capital program budget deficits. [more]
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is cutting down its capital budget as it seeks to keep its costs down, the Wall Street Journal reported. The agency said yesterday that it had cut the cost of its five-year plan by $2 billion, to $24 billion. The MTA’s capital budget pays for projects such as the Second Avenue Subway, new train cars and buses, subway station rehabilitation and general system maintenance. While the authority and the state Legislature agreed to fund the first two years of the five-year plan last year, it still needs to find another $9 billion to pay for the following years up until 2014. Meanwhile, this afternoon, MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder abruptly announced his resignation to become CEO of the MTR Corporation in Hong Kong. [more]
Now that Albany lawmakers have adjourned without doling out any additional funds to the still-incomplete Second Avenue Subway project, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is asking residents living along the future transit line to help lobby for the money. According to the Post, MTA officials are worried about running out of funds by the end of the year, which would hold up their ability to move forward with three new stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th streets. Bidding for those contracts is supposed to begin within months, but William Goodrich, the senior vice president of capital construction at the MTA, said that “without additional funding, we won’t have the ability to procure and award the remaining three contracts.” [more]
City officials were allowed to enter a townhouse at 312 East 86th Street by court order to make sure the building would be steady during construction for the Second Avenue Subway. The property has been of particular interest to local residents because of the peculiar habits of Phyllis Battista, the longtime owner, according to DNAinfo. [more]
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
Italian restaurant Tony’s Di Napoli closed yesterday, due to construction for the planned Second Avenue Subway, said Bruce Dimpflmaier, the restaurant’s general manager. The Upper East Side eatery, at 1606 Second Avenue and 83rd Street, will eventually become a stop on the subway route. “This place has been slated as a stop for the station for many years,” Dimpflmaier said. “We tried to fight and keep it from happening, but we knew it was an inevitable situation.”
[more]
While Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is known as a devoted West Sider, nowadays he’s getting a taste of life in the wake of the Second Avenue Subway project. In this video from the New York Times, Stringer explains the challenges he’s faced after moving to a rental on the corner of 83rd Street and Second Avenue after a fire damaged his Upper West Side home. Along with the noise, dust and unsightly construction activity, Stringer expounds on “the collateral damage of the construction” — most notably the numerous shuttered retail locations. [more]
