Another Groundbreaking For 2nd Avenue Subway

"Gov. Eliot Spitzer and a host of dignitaries will descend through a sidewalk hatch at Second Avenue and 102nd Street, a block south of the spot where Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mayor John V. Lindsay held a groundbreaking in October 1972....Several factors actually suggest that this time the outcome may be different. The financing for the $3.8 billion project appears more certain than in the past, including an anticipated federal commitment to cover about a third of the cost."

This time the "plan is more measured. The goal is to build a first section of the subway with stops along Second Avenue at 96th, 86th and 72nd Streets and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue. It is intended to operate as an extension of the Q line and is expected to open in 2013. Once further financing is secured, later phases of construction will extend the line north to 125th Street and south to Lower Manhattan."

However, Thursday's groundbreaking will actually not be the third, but one of many in its storied history.

"It was September 1929 when the city formally announced plans to build the Second Avenue subway, running the length of the East Side and into the Bronx. The cost of digging the Manhattan portion of the tunnel was estimated at $99 million...The Second Avenue plans were part of an ambitious expansion to add a 100-mile network with an overall estimated cost of about $800 million. But within a few years, during the Great Depression, planning for the new line came to a halt."

"The plans were revived during World War II. In 1951, voters approved a measure that allowed the city to raise $500 million for transit improvements, with the expectation that most of it would go to build the new line. But the money was used to fix up the existing system. No work was performed on Second Avenue."

Make sure to click on video by this reporter in "related links". As reporter William Neuman concludes in the video, "The lesson is that a groundbreaking does not make a subway".

Thanks to Mark Boshnack