I caught a link to SecondAvenueSaga's latest post on, you guessed it, the ill-fated subway line that the MTA continues to attempt and fail at building. The speed of construction is terribly slow and the funding for the project is tenuous at best, possibly running out by the time we reach year's end. They mentioned a Crain's article talking about the suffering businesses on 2nd Ave due to the construction, but the misery we all will have from not having a better MTA system is just too much to handle.
From SecondAvenueSagas:
In an article in Crain’s that explores how business along Second Ave. is suffering due to the ongoing construction, Kira Bindrim hints at some fiscal troubles ahead for the seemingly cursed subway line. She writes:
The city is preparing to break ground on the stretch from East 68th to East 73rd streets. Construction is currently moving in three-month intervals on alternate sides of the avenue, and Phase I is slated to be finished in 2015. But three months has become six months in some locations, and work between East 83rd and East 86th streets could be stalled by lawsuits over displaced residents. The MTA has funding for contracts through year-end, but additional money must come from its next capital plan. Prospects for that budget are grim.
Indeed, economic crises have derailed the line’s building twice, in 1929 and in the 1970s. The completion date for the $3.8 billion Phase I has been postponed two years. “I’m afraid they’re going to run out of cash,” Mr. Pecora says. “We might be faced with just a hole in the road.”
In reality, based on what we’ve learned in the past, this dire report isn’t quite true. With the Feds kicking in so much money for this project, Phase I will, at some point, become a reality. Considering that a tunnel running north of 96th St. already exists, there’s a good chance that Phase II — the extension north to 125th St. — will see the light of the day sometime over the next fifteen years.
Fifteen years is a long time, a decade and a half on top of nearly eighty years of promises for this T line. It is nice that the author has some hope, but frankly I do not see it. If there was anytime to fully fund the line and get it done in a respectable ten years (Shanghai built a full system in that time), it would be now. With President Obama in office and a Democratic Congress behind him, all the Senate has mustered is $9.5 billion for mass transit...across the country. Unless that is all going underneath 2nd Ave, I doubt we'll see much progress in fifteen years. A safer bet is hoping for completion in fifty.
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