September 2, 2024, 3:43 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
It has taken no less than a century for the extension of the New York subway to finally be completed. The result is a section of track with three new stations. However, this hardly helps New York’s overloaded subway network.
Rob and Mary Ann Gorlin are delighted. Instead of one of the many sights New York has to offer, this morning, the two tourists from Detroit are eager to visit the 72nd Street Station, the newly opened subway station on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “It’s so spotless and beautiful inside,” says Mary Ann about the clean, bright platform. After examining the new route network, they board a gleaming train and set off toward downtown.
Almost a century has passed since the first plans for the Second Avenue extension were first mooted in 1929. First, the stock market crash and the Great Depression intervened, and then poor planning and budgeting delayed construction. After several groundbreaking ceremonies and tunnel excavations in the 1970s, construction work finally began in 2007. And now it is here. With three new stations costing 4.5 billion dollars (4.2 billion euros), this subway has become the most expensive in the world. Although the Red Line in Los Angeles was similarly expensive, a second construction phase is planned for New York, which is set to cost a further 6 billion dollars (5.7 billion euros).
The new subway line brings New York hardly any relief
Immaculate and beautiful – a rare description for a network that is overloaded at peak times, stuffy in summer, and plagued by rats. Take the C-Train, for instance, which feels like a rumbling steel behemoth, where delays are more the rule than the exception. The rattling, clattering trains are used by an average of 5.7 million people on a weekday. And they do not fit in at all with the modern image of the metropolis.
A sign of the future is now found along 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets. There tourists take photos on escalators and commuters are happy about shorter journeys to work. “The train here takes me straight to Times Square. That could easily be 20 minutes,” estimates Scott Schwamp, for example, who is on his way back to New Jersey after a client appointment. “If I had walked to the 6 train, I would have been late,” says bakery manager Latifah Williams.
Yet the Subway, with its origins dating back to 1904, has been sluggish in its transition into the 21st century. The New York subway fails to reach large swathes of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Leaving many New Yorkers stranded in what a team of designers has dubbed the ‘subway desert,’ thirsting for better transportation options. Although the three new, shiny stations now serve the Upper East Side, whether the extended Q line will reach Harlem or the southern tip of Manhattan as hoped is still up in the air. Precisely, because of the 6 billion dollars that would have to be raised for it.
The change to the route was long overdue
Yet the city of millions is in dire need of new sections of track. During rush hour, the trains, which are already running at the highest possible frequency, can barely cope with the twelve percent increase in passengers between 2009 and 2016. And junctions are heavily overloaded. Unlucky commuters may find themselves waiting for multiple trains on congested routes before squeezing into an already-packed carriage. Displays or announcements about departure times are the exception rather than the rule.
The fact that some passengers spread their legs wide apart on the seats and women are groped does not make the crowds any more pleasant. The MTA has now launched its own poster campaign against “man spreading”, which is also classified as a misdemeanor. Even with surveillance camera footage, the police struggle to apprehend these gropers.
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Many train stations are to be modernized
On the bright side, good cell phone reception and free Wi-Fi are gradually becoming standard in the New York subway. According to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plans, more than 30 existing stations are to be modernized over the next five years. At a cost of 27 billion dollars (25.4 billion euros). And, as in London, Paris, and Berlin, walk-through trains are to be purchased. The plan also includes better lighting, digital display panels, and charging stations with USB ports on the trains.
In the meantime, New Yorkers can celebrate the network’s expansion across approximately 30 blocks. A project nearly a century in the making. At 72nd Street, where more and more people are peering into the dark tunnel on Thursday morning, waiting in long silence for the approaching rumble, a man says, “A new station, yet the same old delays.”
The original German version of this article was published in 2017.