MTA to begin digging 2nd Ave. subway in East Harlem, 50 years after project halted

Decades of empty promises are no more.

The MTA board on Monday approved a contract to begin major construction on the Second Avenue Subway extension into East Harlem.

The nearly $2 billion deal covers the bulk of the work for the extension, which aims to add three new stations on the Q line that transit officials said would one day serve 110,000 daily riders. The contract includes work to bore a new tunnel between 120th to 125th streets, rehabilitate a tunnel between 110th and 120th streets that was dug out and later abandoned in the 1970s, and build the new stations at 116th Street and 125th Street.

The contract was awarded to Connect Plus Partners, a joint venture between the major construction firms Halmar International and FCC Construction. Its approval represents one of the most significant steps in the history of the project, which was first conceived over a century ago. The approval of the deal comes 50 years after the MTA abruptly halted work on the East Harlem subway extension due to the city’s financial crisis in 1975.

“The people of East Harlem have waited long enough,” MTA Chair Janno Lieber said at Monday’s morning board meeting. “[It’s] the largest tunneling contract ever awarded by the MTA.”

The vote to approve the deal came during a special board meeting held in Harlem. The transit agency board doesn’t typically meet in August. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who earlier this year approved legislation to fund the MTA’s new construction plan, attended.

“This one is long overdue,” she said

The MTA said early street-level work will begin in September. Heavy civil construction will start in January.

The awarded contract will also include designing and building a “state-of-the-art” tunnel boring machine that both excavates the earth in front of it and simultaneously installs concrete tunnel lining behind. The boring machine is expected to go into the ground in 2027.

The extension is expected to cost $7.7 billion, making it one of the most expensive new subway construction projects in the world on a per-mile basis.

MTA officials said the contract will save $100 million in labor costs because of a 40% reduction in the number of tunnel crew workers they expect to hire, compared to the first phase of the Second Avenue subway project that brought three new Q line stations to the Upper East Side in 2017, ending at 96th Street.

The contract also included savings by reducing the planned back-of-house space at the line’s new 125th Street station, officials said.

The contract to build the extension’s third station at 106th Street is still in procurement, MTA officials said. The $2 billion contract approved Monday covers the construction of the tunnels; there will be subsequent contracts for station construction and system installation.

The bulk of the construction work means lifelong residents in East Harlem can expect major changes to their neighborhood. Some residents have already received 90-day vacancy notice letters informing them they’ll have to move out of their homes under eminent domain to make way for the new subway line.

Officials said the contract plans on utilizing a 20% local hiring goal for East Harlem residents to boost the local economy.

“We’re not compromising on our commitment to the community. We’re working very hard to make sure that East Harlem residents benefit from every part of the project,” MTA construction chief Jamie Torres-Springer said.

In 2023, MTA officials and Hochul said the next phase of the subway line’s extension likely wouldn’t extend it further south down Second Avenue, but instead connect it westward to St. Nicholas Avenue, linking service to the A,B,C and D trains. When asked about those plans, Torres-Springer said that possibility still exists.