Schumer: $3.4B FTA Grant for SAS Phase 2
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
New York MTA Construction & Development illustration.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), as he has done previously with other transportation projects in his state, has jumped the gun on a formal announcement by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority on an FTA FFGA (Full Funding Grant Agreement) for Phase 2 of the New York City Transit Second Avenue Subway (SAS).
The FFGA, $3.4 billion, was expected to be awarded this quarter or in first-quarter 2024. Funded by the 2021 federal IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) bill, it is the largest in the history of the FTA’s Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program, which supports transit capital projects.
Phase 2, projected to cost $7.7 billion, will extend SAS Q Train service 1.5 miles from 96th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in densely populated East Harlem, a neighborhood without many mass transit options. “This grant is significant not only in its size, but also in where it’s going,” Schumer said “The funds will be used to build public transit in a neighborhood that has been neglected for far too long.”
MTA has projected Phase 2 construction to start by year end and has begun acquiring East Side property necessary for subway station, ventilation and power facility construction, and for TBM (tunnel boring machine) underground staging. At 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, SAS Phase 2 will connect with the 4/5/6 Lexington Avenue Line. Some of the line will utilize two existing tunnels under Second Avenue built in the 1970s but abandoned during New York City’s brush with bankruptcy that decade. MTA estimates completion within 7 to 8 years.
SAS Phase 1, which cost $4.6 billion, opened on Jan. 1, 2017. The full, 8.5-mile, 16-station SAS will be built in three more phases to eventually connect Harlem–125th Street to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan. When finished, it will serve a projected 560,000 daily riders, and cost more than $17 billion.
Schumer, according to one industry observer, “has been very effective, even relentless, in getting funding for transit projects in New York City and State. He really wants to be seen as the person delivering the money. He certainly deserves a lot of credit, even though he tends to get ahead of the formal process. That’s politics.”
