I’ll admit “MTA Awards Boring Contract” doesn’t sound like the transit headline of the year, but it’s true. At a special meeting last week, the MTA Board voted to approve the largest tunneling contract in agency history to bring the Second Avenue Subway into East Harlem, almost 100 years after the idea was first proposed. Residents have waited long enough, and we can’t – and won’t – keep them waiting any longer for Phase 2.
This $1.972 billion contract includes work to extend existing tunnels to 125 St and excavate space for the future 116 St and 125 St stations, with another stop at 106 St to be built as part of a separate contract. Heavy civil construction will start in the new year, with the tunnel boring itself expected to begin in 2027. Crews will use 750-ton machines equipped with 22-foot diamond studded drill heads to dig the new segment deep below Second Avenue at a pace of roughly 40 feet per day.
Once completed, the extension stands to benefit more than 300,000 riders – including 110,000 new riders – making SAS2 a damn good investment by the numbers. We all know building in New York ain’t cheap, but the budget for Phase 2 is in the same range as tunnel projects by international peers, and the whole project comes in at the lowest cost per rider of any heavy rail project in America.
We’re keeping costs low by using Design Build – a first for an MTA tunneling project, unifying design and construction elements – and by incorporating the lessons learned from Phase 1, which opened in 2017. For that project, utility relocation was a major driver of costs and delays. This time around, we started that work early – more than a year ago – to minimize any impacts.
This isn’t easy to do, but as I like to say, the new MTA isn’t afraid to do the hard stuff. Thanks to Governor Hochul, we’re embarking on our most ambitious capital plan yet – $68.4 billion dollars – to create a better system for the 15 million people who call the metropolitan region home. It’s a new golden age for transit construction and expansion.
Not just SAS2, but the Interborough Express (which we just celebrated a few weeks ago), Metro-North Penn Access through the Bronx, major LIRR expansion projects like Third Track and Double Track and Grand Central Madison, and what is in some ways our biggest expansion project: making subway stations ADA accessible five times faster than in the past.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I know that folks are perennially looking at the MTA to do more and to do better, and I’m proud to say we are. Ridership is growing, service is improving across the board — helping to revive New York’s economy post-COVID — and now we’re making headway on a transformative, generational megaproject. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s three new stations in East Harlem.
Janno Lieber is MTA Chair and CEO.
