Under the best-case scenario, Phase 2 of the Second Ave. Subway will not open until 2027, and this three-stop extension of the Q train through East Harlem may not be ready for passengers until 2029, according to new documents released last week by the MTA.

As part of the refresh of the environmental review process in advance of starting heavy construction toward the end of next year, the MTA received certification recently from the Federal Transit Administration that the Phase 2 documents showed no significant environmental impacts that were not previously addressed. Included in this FONSI were a series of questions and answers that arose out of this past summer’s public comment period, and in response, the MTA discussed the lengthy construction schedule and its hopes to speed up work. “[The] MTA will continually seek opportunities to reduce the construction schedule, if feasible and if it can be done without compromising safety,” the agency stated. “The Supplemental EA assumed a construction completion year of 2029 to provide a conservative (i.e., worst-case) time frame, so as not to underestimate the period of time during which the community would experience construction-related effects. [The] MTA is investigating alternative project delivery and other methods to expedite an opening date potentially as early as 2027, contingent on timely funding.”

On the one hand, the MTA’s response says nothing new. We’ve known about the lengthy construction schedule for Phase 2 for a few years, and the agency is constantly “investigating alternative project delivery” methods in an attempt to speed up their pathetically lengthy construction timelines (with little to show for it). On the other hand, the MTA’s response is notable for what this means for the present and future of the Second Ave. Subway. If the MTA can somehow achieve a 2027 opening date for Phase 2 of this project, a full 20 years will have elapsed between the 2007 groundbreaking for Phase 1 and the revenue service date for Phase 2, and in that 20 years, the MTA will have built only six new subway stops and less than four miles of tunnels. Needless to say, this is an unsustainable pace for a city trying to keep pace with international peers and in desperate need of massive expansion of its transit network.

To add insult to injury, a glimpse back at the original Environmental Assessment documents for the full-length Second Ave. Subway reveals an alternate timeline in which the full-length project would be wrapping up within the next 13 months. Originally, the MTA wanted to begin construction in 2004, build segments concurrently, including starting Phase 3 before Phases 1 and 2 were to be completed, and finish the full project for a total cost of $16.8 billion by the end of 2020. Now, the MTA hopes to start Phase 2 by 2020, and we still don’t know how much this modest segment will cost. (The most recent cost estimates for Phase 2 were $5.5-$6 billion, nearly double the figure the MTA put forward in the 2004 EA documents.)

Like I said, this problem isn’t anything new: The MTA’s inability to build any major project in a timely manner has garnered headlines for years, and it’s why East Side Access is going to take 15 years to complete. It is also in stark contrast to peer cities such as London and Paris, both of which are building significantly more new transit connections and new miles of track in far less period of time for far less money. But it highlights part of the city’s mobility crisis: How can New York City grow if the transit network simply cannot keep pace? How can the city expect to develop new potential job and population centers if it takes two decades to build six new subway stops?

I do not have the answers to these questions, but neither does the MTA. Without serious transit construction reform though, New York City will stagnate. The roads can’t handle more personal automobiles, and buses can’t move efficiently through traffic. For now, we wait — somehow, until 2027 at best — for the only three new subway stops under consideration right now.

Other Highlights from the FONSI

Reinforcing a slow construction timeline wasn’t the only newsworthy bit from the FONSI Q-and-A document. I’m mostly going to embed Tweets from this thread of mine. First up, why are the stations so overbuilt? The MTA says, “Projected ridership.” I find this to be a real symptom of extremely onerous safety requirements that require massive underutilized mezzanines. At no point are the Second Ave. Subway mezzanines crowded, and the stations aren’t projected to be popular enough to warrant more space that even more crowded IRT stations.

Next up: Why are the stations so overbuilt? The MTA cites anticipated passenger load & emergency exit needs, but plenty of smaller stations support higher ridership than the SAS stations. This is a symptom of modern conservative safety guidelines requiring overbuilt stations. pic.twitter.com/s7eprWYwxC — Second Ave. Sagas (@2AvSagas) November 20, 2018

How about station entrances? Those can’t be relocated due to costs.

How about entrances? Costs are so high to relocate utilities that even with these overbuilt mezzanines, the MTA can't afford entrances on both sides of Second Ave. Not a sign of a healthy well-run construction project IMO. pic.twitter.com/4ITl8EFwTv — Second Ave. Sagas (@2AvSagas) November 20, 2018

Finally, the construction process. This warrants a post on its own due to the short-sightedness of the answer. Once the MTA sinks a tunnel boring machine into the ground, the agency is actually pretty good at operating it. Tunnel construction times and costs are generally in line with international standards, and it’s the rest of the project that costs so much and takes so much time. For Phase 2, a lot of people have called upon the MTA to dig a tunnel long enough for connections to West Side trains (or even toward New Jersey), but the MTA has no plans to do so. It’s a bad and costly decision. More on that soon.