Hochul’s flashy Second Ave. Subway plan uses the – Latest News
New York’s subways can be in much better form if governors didn’t milk them for pleased headlines; Gov. Kathy Hochul’s new Second Avenue scheme is just the newest instance.
Hochul introduced Tuesday that she’s instructed the company to shelve its century-old plan to stretch the Q line additional into Lower Manhattan, and as a substitute transfer ahead on extending it west alongside a hundred and twenty fifth Street to Broadway.
It’s huge, it’s flashy, and it guarantees much-needed service to a transit-dry space of Upper Manhattan — great fodder for the gov’s re-election bid.
No matter that it’ll price the budget-challenged MTA a cool $8.1 billion (and doubtless a lot more; New York public megaprojects all the time go far overbudget), and may’t even begin for one more six years no less than, since that’s the soonest the company will end extending the Q from 96th Street to a hundred and twenty fifth.
Hochul, that’s, will likely be long gone from workplace long earlier than actuality can chunk in.
Left holding the bag will likely be some future gov, or MTA chief — or, truly, future straphangers.
One epic instance of how badly political meddling can affect commuters: Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s manic push for the first Second Avenue extension to complete by Jan. 1, 2017, so he may take a New Year’s Day victory journey on the new line.
That diversion of key sources was a direct trigger of the Summer of Hell that adopted, with large failures on a number of strains due to deferred-but-vital upkeep.
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Meanwhile, some work nonetheless wants ending on that first leg: Late final month, the MTA put out a Request For Proposals for contractors to finish key infrastructure work on the now-not-so-new stations, together with security measures like emergency exit lights.
Promising daring public tasks is a fantastic manner for politician to look good — any and all issues that observe, even multibillion-dollar ones, may be blamed on the bureaucrats, if the pol is even nonetheless round when the piper involves call.
Plus, even the most egregious price overruns appear to vanish into the MTA’s mammoth finances.
Yet New Yorkers most of all simply need a secure transit system that works reliably to get them from Point A to Point B on time and with out being stabbed, shoved or in any other case molested.
Oh, for a governor who’ll thunderously vow to ship that.
