1: There were a lot of points in the briefing (attendance was conditional that we don't share the deck until the MTA board meeting on Monday where the contract will be formally awarded). 2: Reworking already designed lines/systems is a lot harder than starting from scratch, gotta acknowledge that.
3: The 125th Street station's back of house square-footage was cut in half. Much of the remainder has been moved into the ancillaries. 4: The 116th St station box is now entirely within the footprint of the existing tunnel that was dug in the 1970s, and the mezzanine has been cut in half.
Are they still going with the draft design where passengers take elevators down to a mezzanine then go up to the platform?
(For 116th, I mean)
No idea, we were focused on the tunnel and structural stuff today. Didn’t ask.
I think the design is a great idea for saving on utility relocation. But the fact they didn’t include non-emergency stairs is so weird.
5. They say they've gotten $100m in labor savings from the sandhogs and using a more sophisticated TBM that's capable of doing some of the concrete work needed to initially line the tunnel 6. Much of the per-KM tunneling costs is fixed in the cost of actually getting the tunneling machine
7. Which is why they'd like to -- if feasible, environmental clearances are obtained, etc -- keep the TBM going across town and there's a study under way about that rn. 8. Otherwise, the tunneling cost is the TBM procurement and then the short tunnel from 120/2nd to 125/Lenox
Halle-fucking-lujah
9. They're going back to design-bid-build for the systems and stations outfitting, post the finalization of the designs for 106 (to be awarded next year) 116 and 125 (included in this contract). 10. The 125 station will be deep, but that's a function of needing to go under the Lex.
Have they said anything about the elevator-only 116 St with a below-platform mezzanine? Does the contract being watched for 116th mean it's too late to change any of that?
Yeah, that one felt like a historic mistake: trading the inconvenience of riders over the rest of the life of the station, for the inconvenience of neighborhood residents temporarily during construction.
This contract is converting the existing tunnel from 116th to 120th into a station box. We didn't get into the elevator or underpass stuff today.
Is that the tunnel with the inspection track in between the two running tracks?
Yes, it was originally supposed to be a 3 track tunnel and they're now using the center track space for the platform.
11. Back to the tunnel, they've made a big deal of reducing the number of cross-hatches (essentially tunnnels knocked into the twin bores linking them together) from six to two. The costs savings aren't huge ($60m), but the risk reduction is pretty massive.
$60M saved is enough to fund an uncomplicated ADA project elsewhere.
If they get the Crosstown phase, that'll be an opportunity to squeeze more, particularly out of the station designs. The Phase 3 designs, to the extent that they exist, should get a massive going over too. There are real opportunities to keep pressing forward and the MTA should take them.
I have a real question for you: why has no part of the 2nd Ave Subway ever considered going to Brooklyn via Court st? Seems like a no brainer: cover more area and use the excess capacity on the Fulton line, as well as the massive interchange that is functionally half operational
The needs assessment seems like it pooh-poohed phase 3 pretty hard. I assume the costs would have to come _way_ down for them to start pushing for it.
manhattan needs crosstown connections. all of those lines are north/south with no easy transfers between them. I think this line needs to go to the 1 train, and we need a train from La Guardia to the 1 on 96th street. heck. send them both to jersey.
"Time for some Q train problems in Fort Lee"
i want to go nuts and extend that thing to cliffside park