Subway Briefing: Second Avenue Subway Opens: Updates

Subway Briefing: Second Avenue Subway Opens: Updates

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“Not counting the 68 years prior,” he added.

Mr. Caronetti, a retired banker, said it was the sixth time he had been on hand for the opening of a new train, having also gone on inaugural rides in Los Angeles and New Jersey.

“I’m just a train buff,” he said, wearing a Metropolitan Transportation Authority cap he had gotten on Friday.

Another train enthusiast at the station, Marvin Loja Espinoza, 17, a senior at Aviation High School, was waiting to get on the first train leaving there.

Originally from Ecuador, he discovered his love for trains when he moved to the United States in 2005. His hometown had no trains, he said.

Struggling to make friends in a new place, he spent his lunches in the library studying train maps, he said. His knowledge of the subway lines is so extensive that his friends call him “M.T.A. Savage.”

Ian Ma, 15, said that when he was a child, he would run his toy trains back and forth across the floor of the family’s home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

On Sunday, he couldn’t stop grinning as he snapped photographs at the new station at 72nd Street. “I’ve always been a big train guy,” he said. “And I feel like I’ve been waiting for this train my whole life.”

Pete Cerwin, 51, has lived at 72nd Street and Second Avenue for 20 years. For him, it has been “two decades of false starts, letdowns and construction.”

Mr. Cerwin, who works at a hedge fund, and his wife, Michele, 49, a management consultant, have seen favorite restaurants and shops open and close over the years, as the neighborhood struggled with the noise, dirt, detours and traffic that the Second Avenue subway extension brought to the rather unexciting section of the Upper East Side. So the two were relieved to see the escalators and the trains start rolling at the nearby station.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day,” Ms. Cerwin said. “Our kids have no excuse to take a cab ever again.”

The new 96th Street station on the long-awaited Second Avenue subway line in Manhattan on Sunday.

Credit
Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times

First Impressions.

Before the Second Avenue Subway officially opened, Kathleen Espinoza, 62, and her husband, Rick Bernal, 53, stopped by the new 86th Street station and began fiddling with the glass panels on the top of the entrance.

They weren’t sure if the clear tape between the panels was an oversight or part of the design.

“I think they just wanted to get it done, done,” Ms. Espinoza said. “You can clearly see it’s a roll of tape.”

The two were walking from their apartment in Yorkville to Central Park.

“Well, it looks really nice,” said Mr. Bernal, who was sipping Champagne from a white paper coffee cup. “We’re dying to try it.”

Across the street at the Gracie’s on 2nd diner, Joey Rinaldi, 21, was nursing a hangover with a cup of chamomile tea and deciding what to order.

Mr. Rinaldi, a student at New York University, had just finished celebrating New Year’s Eve and was looking bleary-eyed after three hours of sleep.




The M.T.A. plans

to extend the line to E. 125th St., but that proposed addition is many years away.

Planned opening:

Jan. 1, 2017

Lexington Ave./

E. 63rd St.


When he found out that the Second Avenue Subway was opening and could shorten his ride to his apartment downtown on Sunday morning, his mood brightened.

“I’m very content,” he said. “Now I have an express train home.”

A New Year’s Eve Subway Ride to Remember.

Shortly after 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, a group of elected leaders and transit officials climbed on board a train at the new 72nd Street station for a memorable trip uptown and into the history books.

“Welcome on the first ride of the Second Avenue subway to 86th Street,” Thomas F. Prendergast, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said over the loudspeaker. Cheers erupted.

The New Year’s Eve soiree and inaugural ride was an exclusive event deep underground ending with a merry countdown to midnight. There was the chairman-led tour to new stations at 86th Street and 96th Street, music by a rollicking jazz band and an array of snacks and local beers. Subway officials and their guests, dressed in bow ties and sequined dresses, toasted the hard work it took to build the huge subway tunnel below Manhattan.

Nearing midnight at the 72nd Street station, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who effectively controls the authority, took the stage, telling the crowd of hundreds that the opening proved that government could do big things. He and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, had briefly greeted each other earlier in the night, despite their frosty relationship, though the mayor did not speak at the event.

Charlie Feliciano, the conductor on the inaugural ride, said he had volunteered to work on New Year’s Eve.

“It was a lifetime experience,” he said. “I did it!”

A Chuck Close portrait of the artist Alex Katz in the new 86th Street station on the Second Avenue subway line, one of 12 works by Mr. Close that adorn the station’s walls.

Credit
George Etheredge for The New York Times

Modern Stations for the 21st Century. And No Rats Yet.

Visitors arriving at the line’s three new stations will find a very different — and far more pleasant — atmosphere than they do in most of the rest of the subway system.

For one thing, because the stations are new, they are clean. Enjoy that while you can. There are shiny escalators and elevators. There are no crumbling tiles or unlit corners. And, perhaps best of all, there are no rats to be seen, though they are expected to appear once careless subway riders start dropping bagel crumbs on the floor.

The stations are also built deeper underground than much of the existing system, evoking the feel of Washington’s subway, with long (and sometimes disorienting) escalator banks. While many of the city’s subway stations have vertical columns, these have an open, arched design that is column-free.

“This is not your grandfather’s subway station,” Mr. Cuomo said at the New Year’s Eve party.

And, with works by celebrated artists mounted on the walls, the three stations could almost be art galleries.

But at least one thing will be familiar: The trains will be subject to the regular delays and annoyances — like sick passengers and manspreaders — that already plague your commute.

Workers dismantling a section of the elevated subway line along Third Avenue in Manhattan in 1955. The Upper East Side has had to make do with only the overflowing Lexington Avenue line in the years since.

Credit
Sam Flak/The New York Times

The Tortured History of the Second Avenue Subway.

It is a story that spans 96 years, but we will try to keep it brief.

The idea for a subway line along Second Avenue was first proposed in the 1920s but faced a series of obstacles that delayed it: the Great Depression, the city’s financial crisis in the 1970s and broken promises when money that might have gone toward the project was spent elsewhere instead.

The elevated train lines that served the Upper East Side were taken down in the 1940s and 1950s, leaving the neighborhood with only one subway route: the overflowing Lexington Avenue line that was a long walk away for many people.

“In many ways, the Upper East Side has kind of suffered with density without the infrastructure,” said Thomas K. Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association. “This is trying to right a historic mistake.”

Finally, in the 1990s, the plans were revived, though subway officials decided to start with a smaller segment of the line, from 63rd Street to 96th Street. Construction began in 2007, to the dismay of some businesses and residents who endured shaking, clanging and dust as the work proceeded.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority faced doubts about whether it would meet a deadline to open in December 2016. Under Mr. Cuomo’s prodding, though, workers were able to complete the required testing so that the line could be opened for an inaugural ride on New Year’s Eve and to the public on Sunday.

Workers put some finishing touches on the new 72nd Street station that is part of the first leg of the Second Avenue subway. The next phase of the project calls for the line to be extended to 125th Street in East Harlem.

Credit
Dave Sanders for The New York Times

What’s Next for the Second Avenue Subway?

Some longtime New Yorkers may look at a map of the new line and wonder: Is that it?

The city once imagined the Second Avenue subway running nearly the length of Manhattan, and possibly even into the Bronx. But officials scaled back their ambitions, choosing to build in phases, with the first one serving the Upper East Side neighborhood known as Yorkville. Many in the area are excited about the opening, but are also concerned about the prospect of rising rents forcing out residents and businesses.

The next phase calls for the transportation authority to extend the line uptown to 125th Street in East Harlem. But that leg of the project, which could cost up to $6 billion, is still in the early planning stages and may not open for another decade. And leaders in East Harlem have already had to fight to restore funding for the segment after it was removed from the authority’s capital budget in 2015.

Officials have said that they eventually want to extend the line south to Houston Street and then to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan for a total length of 8.5 miles. Given how long it took to build the first segment, it may be wise to tell your grandchildren not to hold their breath.

While some have criticized the line as puny, Gene Russianoff, the longtime leader of the Straphangers Campaign, a riders’ advocacy group, said it was an important start.

“It’s the beginning of what could be a glorious line,” he said. “It has tremendous potential.”

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