Poor Decision Screws Second Avenue Subway. More City Involvement could have prevented this.

Thanks to an MTA Design Decision, the Second Avenue Subway Is Already Screwed

The Second Avenue Subway may not be finished in our lifetime, but even if it is, it will be stuck with reduced capacity. Thanks to a crucial decision made by the MTA back in the project's first phase of construction, according to a newly published Regional Plan Association report, the new line will never carry as many passengers as it might have unless the MTA spends billions of dollars to fix a key problem.

 From article, (The Second Avenue Subway may not be finished in our lifetime, but even if it is, it will be stuck with reduced capacity. Thanks to a crucial decision made by the MTA back in the project’s first phase of construction, according to a newly published Regional Plan Association report, the new line will never carry as many passengers as it might have unless the MTA spends billions of dollars to fix a key problem.

The report, which concludes a two-year investigation into the MTA’s capital project overruns, notes that the MTA decided to reduce the number of tracks at the 72nd Street station, where the Q train arrives on the Second Avenue line, from three to two, while the number of platforms was reduced from two to one. This, the RPA says, will have a cascading effect on service, reducing the number of trains that can be run on the Second Avenue line and the Q once future phases of the project are complete.

The original plan for the station at 72nd Street and Second Avenue called for two “island” platforms with a track on either side and one down the middle. Once the T — the yet-to-be-launched portion of the SAS on Second Avenue south of 72nd — entered service, the center track would act as a terminus for Q trains, while T trains would use the side tracks. Passengers would have a cross-platform transfer between the Q and T in both directions, and each train would run on its own tracks with almost no overlap.

But all that changed when the MTA decided to scale back the 72nd Street station to two tracks and one platform, the way it is today. As a result, once the southern section of the Second Avenue Subway opens, the Q will likely have to run all the way up to the future terminus of the SAS at 125th Street, running an alternating schedule with the T, even though the lines will only share six stops.

Why did the MTA do this? The transit authority did not respond to a request for comment before publication. But according to Barone — who spoke to the MTA several times during the two years he researched the report — the authority claims it had to reduce the width of the station so it remained under the Second Avenue roadbed without spreading underneath adjacent buildings, which would have caused “geotechnical” concerns, as Barone puts it. He says the MTA was also worried about getting the necessary easements on those properties as well as community pushback to the increased construction, all problems that the report notes could have been eased by “greater city involvement” during the design phase.)

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