NYC: Baby, Baby, Where Did Our Love (or Second Avenue Subway Money) Go?

[marmar]

(WNYC) The wrangling over how to fund the MTA's five-year capital construction plan was prolonged and painful. The prospect of progress on the repeatedly delayed Second Avenue Subway served as both carrot and stick to get the city to give more money to the MTA. But when the final plan was unveiled Wednesday, funding for the project had shrunk to a third of its size.

In May, MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast wrote a letter to a deputy mayor, asking the city for more money. Prendergast suggested that $1 billion would be earmarked for phase 2 of the East Side line, bringing it north from 96th Street up to 125th Street.



In July, Prendergast sent another letter, also suggesting the MTA needed that money to complete the 2nd phase.



Then, last month, when the city still hadn't ponied up, Prendergast turned from coaxing to threatening and said the agency was preparing to cut the "urban portion" of the program. (Prendergast later walked that statement back.) ...............(more)

http://www.wnyc.org/story/baby-baby-where-did-our-second-avenue-subway-go/

[mikehiggins]

1. Urban Legend

This project has been talked about--and PAID FOR--since I started working in construction in 1967. It is an urban legend and a standard joke. At one point we had to stop work on the Confucius Plaza site because the trenches done for the project caused dangerous slippage in the foundation of the multi-story housing component. It was feared the building might topple into NYC's Chinatown with incredible loss of life. Then, somehow, the funding disappeared. Its been the same story all along whether the PTB call it the Second Avenue Subway, or the THird Avenue Subway.

Maybe we ought to get Trump to build it.