MESSAGE
| DATE | 2009-03-17 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Why there are MTA Budget Cuts
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http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/despite-recession-8-big-projects-lumber-on/
Despite the recession, the building continues.
That is the message of a new exhibition, “The Future Beneath Us,†at the
Science, Industry and Business Library at the New York Public Library
and at the Grand Central Terminal gallery annex of the New York Transit
Museum.
The exhibition, which opened on Feb. 17 and is on view through July 5,
takes a decidedly — some might say undeservedly — optimistic view of
things.
To be sure, New York is indeed building on a gargantuan scale, even if
new residential and commercial construction has mostly come to a halt.
It might even be true, as the introduction to the show asserts, that
“the eight projects in this exhibit comprise New York’s greatest
infrastructure advancements in generations.â€
The four projects featured in the Transit Museum all relate to efforts
underway by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is in the
throes of its own fiscal crisis. While the authority says its major
capital projects are largely assured, the prospect of looming deficits
hangs over any discussion of mass transit’s future in the region.
And the projects will take years to complete. East Side Access, the
project to link the Long Island Rail Road’s Main and Port Washington
lines to a new terminal beneath Grand Central Terminal, is now projected
to be completed by 2015, with a price tag of $15.2 billion.
Also to be completed by 2015 is the first of four phases of the
long-planned Second Avenue Subway, which will eventually extend to Lower
Manhattan from Harlem. The first phase, at a cost of well over $300
million, includes tunnels from 105th Street and Second Avenue to 63rd
Street and Third Avenue, and new stations at 96th, 86th and 72nd
Streets.
A third big M.T.A. project, the Fulton Street Transit Center, has had a
troubled history. The project, a block from the World Trade Center site,
was originally financed by the federal government with $750 million
designated for rebuilding Lower Manhattan after 9/11. But costs kept
rising, and last January the authority said that while work would
continue on the underground portions of the project, it could no longer
afford to move ahead with the above-ground structure. Now the M.T.A.
hopes to use $497 million in federal stimulus money to complete the
project. The date is uncertain.
No. 7 extension, vertical image Patrick Cashin/New York Transit Museum
Workers on the extension of the No. 7 line, in August 2008.
The final M.T.A. project — the westward extension of the No. 7 line to
the so-called Hudson Yards area — arose from the Bloomberg
administration’s failed efforts to build a football stadium to lure the
2012 Olympics to New York. Late last year, officials acted to keep the
project within its $2.1 billion budget, by eliminating plans for one of
two stops along the 1.1-mile extension from the current tunneling
contract. The stop, at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, would sit between
Times Square and the new terminus of the No. 7 line, at 34th Street and
11th Avenue. The city has been urged to restore the stop.
--
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