Phantom Subway May Finally Run

For 84 years it has been New York’s phantom subway -- proposed, debated, planned, partly built and then abandoned.

Now, advocates say it is at last approaching reality.

“We are waiting for the final approval, and hopefully we will begin getting a shovel in the ground by the end of the year,” said Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency responsible for what would be one of the largest construction projects in the city’s history.

Completion of the 2nd Avenue subway is projected for 2020 at a cost of $16 billion. It calls for 16 new stations and would stretch 8.5 miles from Harlem to the downtown financial district.

The subway is designed to relieve congestion on the East Side of Manhattan, served only by the Lexington Avenue line, which carries 1.5 million people on weekdays and whose trains are packed with riders during rush hour.

“It is probably the most crowded line in the nation,” Kelly said, with more passengers than the entire subway systems of Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami.

As a mark of confidence that construction is on the horizon, the MTA approved a measure last month giving it temporary control over property along the route where heavy equipment would be parked. Some of the spaces could be taken over for as long as five years.

The prospect of that extended disruption has operators of the restaurants that line 2nd Avenue worried.

“If a bulldozer is parked outside, who’s going want to eat here?” lamented Lincoln Engstrom, manager of the Cinema Cafe & Bar.

“It’s going to definitely affect us. Seventy percent of our business is outdoors during the summer,” Engstrom said. “We all agree the 2nd Avenue subway is a good thing, but the pain we are going to endure while it is being constructed is not pleasant.”

A block away at Da Filippo, a wood-paneled restaurant specializing in Italian cuisine, Antonio Iofrida, one of the owners, bemoaned the prospect of his sidewalk seating disappearing.

“In the summer, a lot of people like to eat outside,” he said. “When they build the subway, they will mess up the street.”

Because of the project’s size, the subway would be built in stages. Construction initially would take place from 96th Street to 63rd Street, where riders would be able to transfer to other lines.

But hurdles remain before drilling can begin.

Approval of a final environmental impact statement is expected in the fall.

The first phase, scheduled for completion by 2011, would cost $3.8 billion. The MTA’s board has allocated $1.05 billion for design and for initial work. “We expect the other half from the government,” Kelly said.

The Federal Transit Administration has put the project on its short list for consideration, especially because the subway is to be built in three segments, which makes it easier to manage financially.

Gov. George E. Pataki has voiced support. The subway’s allies include State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose home district in Manhattan would benefit from the line.

Advocates say the subway not only would provide faster service and relieve overcrowding on trains, it would spur commercial development along its route.

Others are skeptical. The Partnership for New York City, an organization of powerful business leaders, said in a report that the cost of the entire line exceeded its economic benefit because payback would take many years and the East Side of Manhattan already is well-developed.

“You have to go into a project with your eyes open and know which benefits will materialize and which ones won’t,” said Ernest Tollerson, the partnership’s senior vice president for research and policy. “The economic development will not be as great as running a line into an undeveloped area.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, while supporting the project, also has made it clear his priority is an extension of another line to an area on the far West Side of Manhattan where he says there is greater development potential.

A 2nd Avenue subway was first suggested in 1920, as part of a general expansion of the system, but abandoned because of inflation. In 1929, plans were revived, but the Great Depression caused them to be shelved.

In the 1960s, the subway was once again on the drawing board. And in 1972, ground was broken for the line. Three short, unconnected tunnels were built. But construction stopped when the city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

“There have been a lot of phantom subways over the years,” said Clifton Hood, an associate professor and historian at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., who has studied the origin of New York’s subways

“Some agency would propose a whole mass of new subways. The economy would go downhill. Real estate groups would exert their influence, and what happened was you could never build all of them,” he said.

“The 2nd Avenue subway is part of that history.”