MTA Launches Subway Simulator Game

New York City's Second Avenue subway line has been under construction for most of the time I've lived on the Upper East Side. The line doesn't open until late next year (allegedly) but today the MTA has launched a simulator game of sorts at its information center on 85th Street.

The simulated journey starts on the tail tracks north of the new 96th Street station and enables the virtual operator to guide the train through the tunnels, stopping at the 96th, 86th and 72nd Street stations. Virtual operators with the best times in making the complete journey will be able to post their initials on the leader board, but beware, breaking the rules and erratic driving add time to the score. Passing a red light, speeding, overshooting the platform and enabling the wrong doors to open are among the actions that will add time to the score. Stopping or accelerating abruptly will cause the passenger mood indicator to drop, which also can add time to the score, while a positive passenger mood will subtract time. The three new stations in the simulation were created using renderings as well as the actual materials being used in their construction, so the texture of floor and wall tiles and other materials are replicated in the virtual stations as closely as possible to how they will look when completed.

The first phase of the Second Avenue line is expected to carry 200,000 passengers daily and (slightly) reduce the insane overcrowding on the Lexington line, which famously carries more passengers every day than the entire combined rail systems of Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Inside The Second Avenue Subway

Gizmodo took a tour of the Second Avenue subway and has posted some great photos as well as the video below. The 72nd Street station reminds me of the DC Metro. And that's a very good thing.

New York City's new 2nd Avenue subway line is a construction project of truly monumental scale. Decades of planning and billions of dollars have led to the near-completion of Phase 1 of the tunnel running underneath Manhattan's Upper East Side. Gizmodo was lucky enough to take a tour through a section of the caverns and passages that will soon be a bustling subway line. Boring the two miles of Phase 1's tunnels began in 2010, with the project scheduled to be completed in 2016. It will eventually carry around 200,000 riders between 63rd Street and 96th Street. All four phases of the line, once completed, will run from 125th Street all the way down to Hanover Square at the southern tip of Manhattan. This won't wrap up for many years, however, as funding is procured on a phase-by-phase basis.

(Tipped by JMG reader Peter)

Photo Of The Day

Gizmodo reports:

NYC's East Side Access Project continues apace, and these recent images, taken last month by MTA photographer Rehema Trimiew, show a whole new view of the mind-boggling underground caverns now being constructed beneath Manhattan. From raw walls of exposed geology to this, the space is finally taking on the look and feel of architecture. The titanic yellow facility—its walls secured behind waterproofing geotextiles that will, of course, eventually be covered over altogether, meaning that this surreal yellow scene is just a temporary state—is on the Grand Central side of the project, and will be part of a huge new underground terminal increasing access for the Long Island Railroad.

The tunnel and terminal which will connect Long Island Railroad to Grand Central is one of the two largest public works projects underway in the United States. The other, of course, is the Second Avenue subway on the Upper East Side. The Second Avenue line, which will be called the T train, will run at an average depth of 80 feet below street level. The East Side Access terminal will be a staggering 180 feet below Park Avenue. That'll be a lot of escalators. 47 escalators, in fact.

Afternoon View - UES Muck House

After four years of blasting for the coming Second Avenue subway line, the monstrous muck house on my block is finally coming down and tenants on the first six floors of the above building again have sunlight reaching their windows. This is too late, of course, for the scores of street level businesses on the Upper East Side that long ago closed down. The first trains begin running in 2016. Allegedly.

Second Avenue Subway Progresses

The MTA has posted a slideshow about the progress being made at the future 72nd Street Station of the Second Avenue subway.  Cool photos within.  The blasting has ended and the muck houses on Second Avenue started to come down this week after three years of destroying businesses and blocking apartment windows.  And only three more years (allegedly) until I'll be able to catch a train on my corner. (Tipped by JMG reader Josh)

Their Prices Are Next To Nothing

In a bit of gallows humor, a bike shop on the Upper East Side glumly notes that the storefronts on either side have been vacated due to the construction of the Second Avenue subway. Dozens of businesses have closed around here since the giant muck houses went up three years ago and blocked the shops from the view of passersby.

UES Muck Houses To Come Down

A couple of years ago I took the above photo of one of the "muck houses" that went up all along the Upper East Side as part of the Second Avenue subway construction. Since then many businesses have gone under due to being blocked from the view of pedestrians. Some blocks have only two or three surviving shops out of the ten or so that used to be there. And don't even bring up the muck houses to the folks who live in one of the hundreds of blocked apartments, where they've spent the last two years in perpetual darkness.

Gothamist reports today that the MTA has announced that the muck houses are finally coming down.

"Really? I don't know whether to believe you," a waiter at an empty Japanese restaurant sitting in the shadow of the bland edifice on 72nd Street said when a reporter told him it would be broken down next month. "Ever since that went up, business has been going down, down, down, down." The waiter, who has been working at the restaurant for eight years and asked that his name not be printed, said that the MTA workers rarely came in for food. "Maybe it's too expensive, I don't know. They eat pizza."

Richard Barry, a clerk at the Pet Market next door, said that the Egyptian restaurant on the corner of 73rd, Pyramida Grill, was forced to close last summer. "He couldn't hold on any more. So now it's just us, the Japanese restaurant, and the CVS. There used to be a bakery too across the street but they're gone." "Who would assume that there's a pet store behind this big wall?" Barry said. "I have to ask people what the weather's like outside because I can't tell from here."

I've not read about the city offering any compensation to the businesses or to the apartment residents, some of whom have found it impossible to sell or rent their units. The MTA did erect lovely directional signs pointing people down the shadowy tunnels created by the muck houses.  The names of the now-closed shops on some of those signs have been angrily crossed out.

NYC Subway Blast Was Sign From Jesus

Jesus really wanted to warn the people on my block: "This is a tiny blast compared to what is determined upon Northeast US and New York because of our sins. It behoves us to seek Christ and be on the alert." On an equally hilarious note, watch this Fox News report on the explosion just for the woman who screeches: "We didn't move to this nay-bah-hood to be killed by dynamite!" Love her accent.

(Tipped by JMG reader Stephen)

"Errant" Subway Excavation Explosion Rocks Manhattan's Upper East Side

I'm pretty used to the blasting after two years of this, but today's "errant" explosion about knocked me out of my chair. The New York Times is on it:

“We were doing a controlled blast,” said Adam Lisberg, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “when clearly something went awry and an explosion was felt at street level.” The blast occurred around 12:45 p.m. Michael Horodniceanu, president of the M.T.A.’s capital construction division, said that workers had been blasting to clear an escalator wellway from the street to the subway, but that “we do not know why” the blast caused damage up on street level. Windows were cracked on several floors of the building at the southwest corner of Second and 72nd that houses the Kolb art gallery, including in the gallery itself. Inside it, people could be seen inside cleaning up what looked like debris.

Tomorrow I may be blogging with the Morlocks. Poor Shelley is still under the bed. (Tweets via Gothamist)

UPDATE: I went downstairs to take a few photos, but they've already cleared the rubble. Nothing left now but cops, reporters, news helicopters, and a bunch of chagrined sandhogs counting the blown out windows.

Another Cool Subway Cavern Photo

Source. (Tipped by JMG reader Peter)

Inside The Second Avenue Subway

The New York Times reports today on the Second Avenue subway, whose excavation explosions still rattle my apartment daily after almost two years of work.

In Manhattan, where street traffic tends to stall, only one subway runs the length of the East Side. Every weekday, 1.3 million passengers — more than are carried in 24 hours by the transit systems of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco combined — cram onto the Lexington Avenue line. Yet the chaos above and below has inspired a feat: about 475 laborers are now removing 15 million cubic feet of rock and 6 million cubic feet of soil — more than half an Empire State Building by volume — out from under two miles of metropolis. In December 2016, that tunnel will make its debut as a portion of the Second Avenue subway — the great failed track New York City has been postponing, restarting, debating, financing, definancing and otherwise meaning to get in the ground since 1929.

The 6 train at rush hour really must be experienced to be believed at times. I've often wondered when the Japanese pushers will show up. The Times notes that East Siders can sign up for a Sunday tour of the caverns. I've totally got to do that. (Tipped by JMG reader Peter)

RELATED: The Second Avenue subway and the Long Island Rail Road extension to Grand Central are the two largest ongoing public works projects in the nation. And they're both on the East Side.

Shake, Rattle, & Roll

Finally we have a video of what's been rattling my apartment daily for the last 18 months. The cat used to get freaked out, but now she hardly lifts her head.

(Via - Gothamist)

Morning View - Future T Train Station

At the corner of East 72nd and Second Avenue, workers are preparing the site for one of the major stations for the Second Avenue subway. (Rail enthusiasts have chided me for not using the actual name of the line, the T, which I've avoided because that's what Bostonians calls their entire system.) The building that was on that corner was only recently demolished and already I can't recall any of the half-dozen restaurants that lived there. The building on the left is now peppered with new steel braces so that it doesn't fall over into the giant hole.

Inside The Second Avenue Subway

I probably write about the Second Avenue Subway too much, but it IS one of the largest public works projects in our lifetime and it's happening literally under my feet on the Upper East Side. Today JMG reader David tips us to an in-depth Village Voice examination of the project.

Although the first phase of the Second Avenue subway—an extension of Q service to 96th Street—won't open to commuters before 2016, last month marked a significant step in the construction: the completion of the tunnels between the eventual 96th Street and 72nd Street stations. (Three subsequent phases, proposed to extend the Q to 125th Street and add a new line—the T—spanning 125th Street to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan, have yet to receive funding.) Where for 470 million years there had been rock, there are now two 20-foot diameter, butter-smooth concrete tubes—a giant, mile-long double-barrel shotgun buried 100 feet below the Upper East Side.

They say that section of the tunnel is completed, yet this here desk I'm writing to you from still trembles every day precisely at 5:30pm from the blasting. Lots of very cool images in the clip below.

Photo Of The Day - Subway Cavern

Somehow I was not invited to last night's press tour of the subway construction that has rattled my apartment with twice-daily explosions for the last year or so. Gothamist reports:

The focus of work is now completing the massive new stations at 72nd Street, 86th Street, and 96th Street. Blasting is about 75% complete at the 72nd Street cavern, which we visited last night on a press tour. The MTA expects the blasting to be complete by the end of June. Then more blasting will begin on the 86th Street cavern around the end of this month. If the state and local governments can come up with another $950MM, and everything goes right with the current construction plan, subway service will commence in December 2016.

Hit the link for many more cool photos.

Afternoon View - People Chute

Due to subway construction, pedestrians walk this chute down the middle of Second Avenue. All my favorite little shops (on the left) are long gone by now. Only five more years!

Morning View - Subway Squeeze

Construction for the new subway line has long had much of Second Avenue squeezed down to scarcely more than a single lane.

Afternoon View - Subway Demolition

This building at East 72nd and Second will be the first to go for the coming new subway station. The apartment building on the opposite corner has already been vacated too. This post is yet another in my campaign to drag every one of you along while they build the Second Avenue subway. And speaking hanging on, another explosion is rocking my building. Shelley doesn't even notice them anymore.

Lawsuits Plague Second Avenue Subway

As the Second Avenue subway's massive construction project continues to roar through the Upper East Side, the city is being hit with huge personal injury lawsuits. Claims totaling $27M are already on file.

George Behoyos was biking on Second near 95th Street when he came upon a construction site “set up in an obstructive and unsafe way.” He was hit by a cab and lost his spleen, his $5 million suit says. He also suffered a collapsed lung, a bruised kidney and postsurgery pneumonia. Elizabeth Bengelsdorf was crossing Second at 87th Street when a missing curb caused her to trip, fracturing an elbow, her $5 million notice of claim says. Javier Germidio was driving on Second and 87th last December when he hit an unguarded trench, according to his $2 million suit, which adds that he suffered facial lacerations and “emotional anguish.”

The city already pays out tens of millions annually in slip-and-fall type claims. The first section of the new line is scheduled to be finished in 2016.

Morning View - Muck System Checklist

This is the sign that now greets you on my block as you pass under the massive Second Avenue subway thingie.