Hochul Hands the MTA $54M for Part of Second Avenue Subway Project
By Mark Hallum July 30, 2024 12:05 pm
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The Second Avenue Subway extension has some cash to continue construction, but trains are far from leaving the station.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is allocating $54 million to keep the New York City subway system’s Second Avenue extension to 125th Street on schedule for completion, even without dedicated funding from the congestion pricing plan Hochul paused with great controversy in early June.
While the funding means that work can continue as planned, advocates believe it still doesn’t address the host of problems that a $15 billion infusion from a toll into Manhattan below 60th Street would have resolved.
The $54 million covers the cost of only one contract — relocating utility lines along the extension corridor — in the $182 million Second Avenue extension. The entire project is slated for completion between 2030 and 2039.
“When I announced the pause on implementing congestion pricing, I directed my team to think creatively about how to keep these generational investments moving forward,” Hochul said in a statement. “Now, we are committing the funds needed to continue the utility relocation contract, the first step to building this transformational project to meet the needs of everyday New Yorkers.”
Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Janno Lieber said the funding would prevent the agency from having to sacrifice the subway extension in favor of keeping the overall system in a state of good repair.
“Advancing that utility work now — while congestion pricing is on pause — puts MTA in a position to keep the overall Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 project on schedule while Albany resolves how to fund the $15 billion outstanding for the MTA’s 2020-2024 Capital Program,” Lieber said in a statement.
Still, the lack of congestion pricing calls into question a slew of other improvements including the installation of elevators in subway stations, an upgrade that would make the system compliant with the 34-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act.
“New Yorkers aren’t fools. While favoring her pet projects but stalling congestion pricing, Gov. Hochul leaves trains unreliable, stations inaccessible, buses and Access-a-Ride stuck in gridlock, and millions of riders facing steep fares hikes and deep service cuts,” Riders Alliance Policy Director Danny Pearlstein said in a statement. “With congestion pricing stopped by the governor, the MTA is now facing lower revenue and growing borrowing, maintenance and overtime costs.”
The long-in-the-works Second Avenue subway extension will extend the Q train from East 96th Street to 125th Street, giving uptown commuters an alternative to the 4, 5 and 6 trains, which have traditionally been the only subway line from the Bronx and East Harlem to Midtown and Lower Manhattan.
Commuters got some relief when the first phase of the Second Avenue subway to 96th Street was completed in 2017.
A major source of funding for the extension was supposed to be the $15 charge for most motorists into Manhattan that was scheduled to begin June 30. Hochul outraged many New Yorkers when she suddenly — and, to an extent, inexplicably — paused the program that had been in the works since 2017.
Since then, the MTA has had to implement pauses of its own, sacrificing improvements in favor of simply keeping the trains running.
Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.
