New York, NY —
The federal government is on the verge of giving New York initial funding to connect the Long Island Rail Road from Queens directly to Midtown. The $8 billion project is called East Side Access and it involves building a new train station 14-stories under Grand Central Terminal. As WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports, the project has been dogged by questions about its size and cost.
The new Long Island Rail Road station would start beneath the dining concourse at Grand Central Terminal. Standing here between the Oyster Bar and Metro North’s lower level, you can imagine eight new tracks entering from Park Avenue and stopping at 43rd Street. When the trains arrive, about 9 stories below this food court, passengers would take high speed escalators up to another concourse stretching five blocks north to 48th street. There would be shopping, dining and exits leading to Madison Avenue and Park Avenue. Jeffrey Zupan, who’s a senior transportation fellow for the Regional Plan Association, says everything would be connected to the main terminal.
ZUPAN: And if you wanted to enter into the Grand Central complex you would take escalators up to the lower level, bring you to the food court and from there you could go to any one of a number of subway lines.
Some regional planners, and politicians from Nassau and Suffolk counties, consider a one-seat ride from Long Island to the East Side of Manhattan a holy grail. For commuters who now schlep to midtown from Penn Station, Zupan says a direct link would provide one more incentive to use mass transit and reduce car traffic.
ZUPAN: If you can bring people to the East Side you can save, depending upon exactly where they’re going, you can save them, each person a day about ¾ an hour and secondly provide more capacity to bring people by train into Manhattan.
REPORTER: But East Side Access isn’t cheap – which is why it got shelved in the 1970s during the fiscal crisis. Since then a tunnel’s been built from Sunnyside, Queens to East 63rd Street. But completing the job all the way to Grand Central will cost 7 point 7 billion dollars including financing. That’s about the same cost as rebuilding the entire World Trade Center complex. And the price tag has DOUBLED in the past decade since the MTA began serious planning.
But what if you could do the job for less, without having to build a whole new tunnel and train station? What if there was already a straight shot into Grand Central?
A few engineers and transit buffs have been dreaming about such a plan for years.
HAIKALIS: If you look over here on the train, the silver the yellow lights and the red light that just made that noise, that equipment is the identical car that the Long Island uses.
REPORTER: George Haikalis is a retired civil engineer who now heads a group called the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility. We’re standing in Grand Central Terminal, on a Metro North platform under Vanderbilt Avenue. There are five tracks here that lead to a loop heading north up Park Avenue. Haikalis claims Long Island Rail Road trains could come from the east and connect to these existing tracks without having to build a gigantic new tunnel.
HAIKALIS: Metro North would kiss them goodbye and Long Island would welcome them with open arms.
REPORTER: Haikalis believes Metro North wouldn’t miss the tracks because Grand Central Terminal is currently underutilized. An arrivals board on the wall behind us serves as a relic of the station’s history. The names of trains that came from Chicago, Missouri and upstate New York are now preserved under glass, written in chalk.
HAIKALIS: The last Amtrak trains left here 10-12 years ago, and this is only a commuter station now.
REPORTER: George Haikalis is known as a gadfly in transit circles. But his ideas were given new credence when some powerful neighbors of Grand Central, including the archdiocese, decided to oppose the deep tunnel because it included a giant ventilator shaft on East 50th Street. Some property owners then hired a Canadian engineering firm named Delcan to see if the tunnel option could be avoided by using the existing tracks at Grand Central. Delcan concluded this upper level alternative was viable. And it estimated the MTA would save 1 point 2 billion dollars.
But the MTA heartily disputes that.
NAGARAJA: If we were convinced that we were going to save a billion dollars and we were going to save a lot of time, we would have jumped at this. We are not saving any money and we are not saving time.
REPORTER: Mysore Nagaraja is President of the MTA’s Capital Construction Division. He says the agency has already looked at many options for East Side Access, including the existing tracks at Grand Central. He says any savings from not having to build a deep tunnel would be eaten up by the cost of starting over, and from bringing 160 thousand additional daily passengers directly into Grand Central Terminal. The building would need to be retrofitted with extra exits to accommodate more people. Nagaraja also claims the existing Metro North tracks can’t handle as many trains as the new station. When asked why a highly regarded engineering firm would disagree, Nagaraja’s answer is simple.
NAGARAJA: Metro North operates the rail road every day here. These guys don’t operate the railroad.
REPORTER: Representatives from Delcan did not want to be interviewed about their proposal. The firm is no longer retained by the property owners on 50th Street. The group dropped its opposition to East Side Access after the MTA agreed to reduce the size of the ventilator shaft.
Transit engineers have mixed opinions about whether the upper level alternative is any better than a deep tunnel. Some consultants agree it could never handle enough trains. They also believe it will cause more disruptions to Park Avenue than a tunnel, which would go far below the office towers and infrastructure. Lou Albano – who previously led the transit engineers union, local 375 – believes both plans could work equally well. However, he agrees that using the existing tracks will NOT save as much money as supporters claim. But they would save time for riders, he says.
ALBANO: They can evacuate people faster. That’s a much more efficient – I won’t say safe. You certainly can move a lot of people faster through 3 floors, 30 feet than 150 feet.
REPORTER: There is only one subway station in the city that deep. The F train at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue. There are four sets of escalators at this station. The 15-story journey from platform to street takes Hunter College Student Nina Gomez about three minutes.
GOMEZ: Well you know when you’re taking your time, but if you’re running by the time you get up here out of breath and you feel like you lost like 200 calories!
REPORTER: The MTA is planning to build 16 high-speed escalators for the new Long Island Rail Road station. The authority guarantees this would comply with federal standards requiring an evacuation within four minutes – even if a few escalators break down. Capital Construction President Nagaraja also notes that deep stations aren’t unusual.
NAGARAJA: There are so many deep stations around the world including Washington DC.
REPORTER: London’s Underground is another example. But it’s not just questions about cost and safety that continue to surround East Side Access. The MTA projected a 17 percent increase in Long Island Rail Road ridership between 1995 and 2010. But so far, ridership has grown by only 8 percent. Growth has been faster along the regions served by Metro North. However, planners say improving the Long Island Rail Road could give the region a shot in the arm if travel is easier.
Still - is it worth $7.7 billion? Especially at a time when the region is also fighting for money for a Second Avenue Subway and downtown transit projects?
Jeffrey Zupan of the Regional Plan Association believes it’s time to put these questions aside for everyone’s sake. The MTA has proven its case for a deep tunnel, he says. And construction costs will only continue to rise if the project’s delayed. If opponents gain traction, Zupan fears that federal funding could vanish.
ZUPAN: The federal government will probably say when you get your act together, then we’ll give you money.
REPORTER: The MTA wants half the funds to come from the Federal Transit Administration, which is now on the verge of giving out a 330 million dollar installment once the final design is approved. The MTA is currently soliciting bids for the tunnel and hopes to begin construction by year’s end. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.