Will East Harlem Ever Get its Long-Delayed Subway?

Politicians have long promised to bring East Harlem a new subway line that would give this historically neglected community better transit access to the rest of New York and shift passengers away from some of the country’s most crowded train lines.

The idea appears to have gained renewed momentum, with Gov. Kathy Hochul vowing to finish the project within a decade and transportation officials saying the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill passed last year can help cover half the estimated $6.3 billion cost of what would be one of the world’s most expensive transit projects.

Funds from the bill could help finance a more than $3 billion grant request from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the subway, that the Federal Transit Administration is moving closer to approving. Transit officials hope to break ground by the end of the year.

“Things never looked better for getting the Second Avenue subway to East Harlem,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader.

Still, given the long-awaited project’s many starts and stops, the latest announcements have been met with skepticism in a heavily working-class neighborhood where 71 percent of residents use public transit to get to work, compared with a citywide average of 56 percent, according to Census Bureau data.

“I think that it’s sad that it’s taken this long,” said Princess Jenkins, who owns The Brownstone, a clothing store on East 125th Street a short walk from the subway line’s proposed path. “We want people to be able to access this community.”

The Second Avenue subway line was envisioned to stretch north along the Upper East Side of Manhattan to East Harlem, and south to Lower Manhattan. So far only one part of the plan, along the Upper East Side, has been completed. Here is a look at where the project stands.

Why do supporters want this subway line?

While much of Manhattan is well served by the subway, some neighborhoods along the East River, like East Harlem, can be a long walk from the nearest station.

The extension would add three new subway stops along the Q line between 96th Street and 125th Street, and is expected to serve about 123,000 daily riders, according to the transit agency.

Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University, said the new section would be noteworthy as the “first major project that isn’t serving Manhattan’s elite.”

Beside making the subway more accessible, community leaders believe the new line could bring more foot traffic to some of the area’s small businesses and boost the local economy.

“I think you have a lot of people that are pining for the neighborhood to be thriving and vibrant and full of positive energy,” said Carey King, director of Uptown Grand Central, a nonprofit.

In 2019, the median household income in East Harlem was $32,960, less than half the citywide median household income of $70,590, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by N.Y.U. researchers. About 43 percent of East Harlem’s population of roughly 111,000 identify as Hispanic and 36 percent as Black.

“It could make a really big difference,” said Representative Adriano D. Espaillat, whose district includes East Harlem.

Why has it taken so long?

A proposal to build the Second Avenue subway was introduced in 1929. The Great Depression caused the first delay and over the years officials kept diverting funds for competing interests.

“If the state ever needed money, they would just take it from the Second Avenue subway,” said Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat, whose district is adjacent to East Harlem and includes the Upper East Side, where the first phase of the project was built.

For decades, price hikes, political jockeying and international crises have gotten in the way. In the 1940s, World War II sapped resources and manpower. The Korean War triggered a spike in material costs. In one push in the 1970s, several groundbreakings were held, but work stopped when the city nearly went bankrupt. The most recent incarnation was started in the 1990s.

The first phase of the subway project took about ten years to build and opened on Jan. 1, 2017, connecting the Lexington Avenue station to Second Avenue and adding new stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets. Before the pandemic, about 200,000 people rode it daily. Ridership has crept up to about 58 percent of that level.

M.T.A. officials say it has eased crowding along the Lexington Avenue line — which had been the nation’s most overcrowded subway line — reducing ridership during peak morning periods by roughly 40 percent, from 18,400 riders to 10,800.

The extension would create new stations at 106th, 116th and 125th Streets.

Two final phases of the subway line would extend it south to Lower Manhattan though, for the moment, they are largely just diagrams on a plan.

How much will it cost?

A New York Times investigation showed that at $2.5 billion per mile, construction for the first section of the Second Avenue subway cost more than almost every other recent transit project in the world.

In total that section cost more than $4.4 billion. Pushing the line north is projected to cost nearly $6.3 billion, and major infrastructure projects almost always end up costing more than initially estimated.

The review by The Times — which included interviews with more than 50 contractors and nearly 100 current and former M.T.A. employees — found that transit projects in New York cost more than in other cities because trade unions, construction companies and consulting firms all take larger profits here than elsewhere.

The M.T.A. would pay half the cost with the expectation that the federal government would cover the rest.

What are the challenges?

A big one, not surprisingly, is money.

During a tour of the proposed construction site late last year, Ms. Hochul said she wants to break ground by the end of this year and complete the project within six to eight years.

But the M.T.A.’s struggle to lure back riders and the likelihood that hybrid work schedules will endure even after the pandemic has left the agency in a precarious financial state — in November, it forecast a $1.4 billion deficit in 2025. There are no guarantees that money for the new section of line won’t be diverted again.

Some local leaders and residents also worry that the Second Avenue subway could lead to new development in the neighborhood and push out longtime residents and small businesses.

By the end of the first phase of the project, stretches of the Upper East Side had changed. Many mom-and-pop shops closed, replaced by chain stores and luxury high-rises in an area that has a mix of relatively well-off and middle-income residents. The median residential rent in buildings surrounding Second Avenue rose by 27 percent from 2011 to 2016, according to Street Easy.

And the construction also caused significant disruptions with neighbors and local businesses complaining of noise and obstructions that it made it hard to get to stores.

Jimmy Levantis, the manager of Nick’s Restaurant & Pizzeria, which is near the 96th Street station, said the decade of construction was “like a hell.” Customers couldn’t walk or drive to his restaurant.

“They came, destroyed everything,” he said. Still, once the new section opened, it did increase business, at least until the pandemic hit.

City Councilwoman Diana Ayala, whose district includes East Harlem, worries about “the unintended consequence of this added infrastructure” and added that a focus should be on “protecting small businesses and taking a look at the potential displacement of residents.”

She worries for people like Hector Quiroz, whose restaurant Lechonera La Isla has spent decades serving pernil and pig’s feet, and is steps away from what would be the new 125th Street Station.

Mr. Quiroz, who owns the restaurant along with his wife, said he has no plans to leave.

“Not even a crane could take me away,” Mr. Quiroz said in Spanish.