The Routes Not Taken Page 31

  The connection between the BMT’s Fulton Street Elevated and the IND’s Fulton Street subway began service on April 29, 1956. The connection to the Rockaway Beach line became operational on June 28, with one branch running to Beach 116th Street–Rockaway Park and the other to Beach 25th Street–Wavecrest. That line was extended to the Far Rockaway–Mott Avenue Terminal on January 16, 1958, completing the IND’s first phase. The LIRR continued operating the Rockaway Beach line between Ozone Park and Rego Park until June 8, 1962. It still stands unused.70 There have been ongoing discussions to revive it, but the residents of the adjoining communities have strongly opposed it until now; more recently, there has also been discussion of converting it to recreational purposes.

  Through service finally began on the Dyre Avenue line on May 6, 1957. Unlike the pomp and circumstance of May 15, 1941, the opening event was a quiet affair, officiated by James J. Lyons, in his twenty-third year as borough president.

  The TA also looked at what to do with the funding that was still available to them. Patterson said that their aims no longer involved major capital projects, but rather how “the transit system can be improved, congestion reduced at certain point and service improved,”71 while “maintaining the 15-cent fare for as long as possible.”72

  The Transit Authority was entering the era of “deferred maintenance.” Later that year, Budget Director Beame advised Mayor Wagner that the TA wouldn’t be able to proceed with its more expensive capital projects even if it wanted to; there wasn’t enough money left to pay for them.73 Patterson agreed, but pointed out that “the sooner we get the things that we have asked for, the less risk of higher prices.”74

  The death knell sounded for another of the line extensions that the BOT proposed. Service ended on the last segment of the 6th and 9th Avenue Els, which ran from 155th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan to its connection with the Jerome Avenue line, on August 31, 1958. Extending it to link with the Lenox Avenue line wasn’t feasible; as with the 3rd Avenue El, it would have cost too much to rebuild the aging structure. Patterson stated that discontinuation of the service would result in an annual savings of $230,500 ($1.79 million in 2011 dollars).75

  By 1959, only two new projects were proposed. One was a new version of a Board of Transportation plan from the 1930s and 1940s calling for acquiring the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad’s Midtown line and converting it to 6th Avenue line express tracks between the West 4th and 34th Street stations. Rather than doing that, the TA would build two new “deep tunnel” tracks for the same purpose.

  The other proposal was new. The TA proposed installing a third track on the Jamaica Avenue line between the 160th Street and Eastern Parkway stations.76 This was a cheaper way to parallel the Queens Boulevard line.77 It would provide more service to rapidly expanding communities in southeastern, eastern, and northeastern Queens whose bus lines fed into the Jamaica Avenue and Queens Boulevard lines. No community between Jamaica and East New York may have benefitted. There was little room for new express stations along Jamaica Avenue or Fulton Street without additional construction or land acquisition. Queens Borough President John T. Clancy supported the proposal, but there was little enthusiasm or funding for it. The TA made several more proposals to build the third track before abandoning the idea.

  The TA needed to find funding to support their programs while maintaining the system and purchasing new subway cars. Patterson identified three possible ways to pay for this work: raising fares, increasing taxes, or purchasing in installments.

  Wagner quickly shot down a fare increase: “It is the purpose of this administration to keep subway fares down. We will fight for this in every possible way.”78 Moreover he opposed using operating funds for any capital projects.

  No other sources of funding were identified and Patterson was correct about the costs of the TA getting what they were asking for. Years and decades later, it would cost much more and take more effort to upgrade a system that had been allowed to further deteriorate.

  Bronx Borough President Lyons announced he wouldn’t seek an eighth term in office on July 12, 1961. He had overheard President John F. Kennedy say in a phone call that he was in line for an important federal post.79 In 1962 Lyons was appointed to serve as special assistant to the U.S. commissioner to the 1964–65 World’s Fair in Queens. After suffering complications from gall bladder surgery, Lyons died on January 7, 1966.

  The TA made its most ambitious proposals in a decade in 1962. On July 17 a proposal was released for a new north–south line between the 47–50th Street–Rockefeller Center station on the 6th Avenue line and 138th Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. It would connect with the Pelham and Concourse lines. A new station would be built under the IRT’s 138th Street–Grand Concourse station, allowing for transfers to and from the White Plains Road and Jerome Avenue lines. As with the earlier proposals to link the Pelham line with the 2nd Avenue line, the TA would rebuild the platforms and tracks on that line for the bigger IND and BMT cars.

  Joseph F. Periconi, a former TA Board member and state senator, had succeeded Lyons as Bronx borough president. His response was straight out of Lyons’s playbook: “Too many Bronxites who have cooled their heels at subway platforms know this improved transportation is long overdue.”80 Queens Borough President Clancy, noting his borough’s population was almost half a million more than that of the Bronx, complained that the TA “should see fit to give priority to the need of the Bronx over that of Queens.”81

  The focus of the TA’s overall plan was on Queens. Patterson brought back the plan that the BOT and TA discussed a decade earlier for the 2nd Avenue line, saying it would be built to allow for a route to branch off at East 76th Street and run to Queens. No terminal point was identified and Patterson said the TA would ask for funding in its 1964–65 capital plan.

  That wasn’t fast enough for Mayor Wagner, who up until that time had not been a strong advocate for expanding the subway system. He wrote to Patterson on August 11, asking him to speed the planning for the Queens line. Wagner supported the Bronx line, but “I certainly do subscribe without reservation to the high desirability and urgent need of expanding subway services to and within this dynamic borough which would, in my judgment, give sharp, new impetus to Queens’ rate of growth and open up new vistas of development.”82

  In February 1963, the TA proposed a variation of the Queens–Manhattan plan Patterson had raised in the 1950s. The route would split from the Bronx line in Central Park and run under East 76th Street and the East River to Queens and along 34th Avenue to Steinway Street, where it would link with the Queens Boulevard line’s local tracks and run to Northern Boulevard. A spur line would run along Northern Boulevard, Main Street, Kissena Boulevard, and the Long Island Expressway to Springfield Boulevard.

  A second route revived the BOT’s plan extending the Fulton Street line into southeastern Queens, running from the Euclid Avenue or Lefferts Boulevard stations to Springfield Boulevard via Linden and Merrick Boulevards.83 A third component would reactivate the unused part of the Rockaway Beach line and connect the Far Rockaway and Rockaway Beach branches with the Queens Boulevard line in Rego Park.

  Figure 10-4. A map showing the routes proposed in the 1963 New York City Transit Authority plan.

  The City Planning Commission built on the TA’s plan with one of their own. Released in early May, its plan proposed a line branching from the BMT’s Broadway line at 23rd Street, running up Madison Avenue to East 59th Street, where it would turn east and then split into two lines. One would go into Queens, connecting with the LIRR’s Port Washington, Montauk, and Atlantic84 lines, which would be converted for subway use. The other revived the BOT’s 1940s plans extending the 2nd Avenue line into the Bronx, connecting with the Pelham and Concourse lines (this was the last time this was proposed).85 The LIRR’s station at the then-closed Belmont Racetrack would become a regional transit center.86 It was hoped this was a new start at a regional rail system. The LIRR was also considering a new tunnel unde
r the East River, operating to a terminal on the East Side.87

  Figure 10-5. The City Planning Commission included this map showing its proposals and those made by the New York City Transit Authority in its 1963 report Better Rapid Transit for New York City.

  The TA and CPC knew there were no financing for those lines, though on October 6, 1962, the CPC released its proposal for the city’s capital budget for the eighteen months beginning in January 1963. Although the capital budget was over a billion dollars, there were no funds for subway expansion. Funding was something the Planning Commission would try to address. Discussions with the federal government about sources of funding had begun. In the next year, the Urban Mass Transportation Act would be enacted, but nothing could be done for the time being.

  The TA’s plan for 76th Street was the last time building an East River tunnel that far north was proposed; its efforts thereafter turned southward. On May 24, 1963, Mayor Wagner met at City Hall with Joseph E. O’Grady (who succeeded Charles Patterson as chairman after Patterson passed away on October 13, 1962), TA Board Members Daniel J. Scannell and John J. Gilhooey, Queens Borough President Mario J. Cariello, and City Planning Commission Chairman Francis J. Bloustein to discuss the transit needs of Queens. Out of that meeting came news that a subway tunnel would be built between Manhattan and Queens, from East 61st Street in Manhattan. O’Grady hoped the CPC could identify funds allowing work to begin that summer.

  Figure 10-6. This map showed the City Planning Commission’s plan for rail service connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn with Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties.

  O’Grady urged the City Planning Commission to provide the $850,000 ($5.05 million in 2011 dollars) necessary to begin work on the tunnel. By October, though, the route of the tunnel had changed. Citing $5 million in cost savings $42.8 million in 2011 dollars), easier grades, and smaller curves, its Board voted on October 17 to shift the tunnel north to East 64th Street. No route in Manhattan or Queens had been identified.

  The Rockefeller Institute on York Avenue objected due to concerns about tunneling work and train operation creating vibrations affecting scientific work.88 Groups including the Citizens Budget Commission, the Fifth Avenue Association, and the Queens Borough Chamber of Commerce opposed the plan, questioning the TA’s claims of cost savings. They felt that transfer connections with the Lexington Avenue and 6th Avenue lines wouldn’t be possible if the 64th Street line was built instead of a line along 61st Street.

  The Board of Estimate and the City Council’s Finance Committee held a joint hearing on the 64th Street plan at City Hall on February 23, 1964. O’Grady testified that the farther north the line was built the more the project’s cost would drop. The location of the tunnel would shift if seismological tests confirmed the Rockefeller Institute’s concerns. O’Grady explained the cost differential between building the tunnel at 61st Street or farther north:

  The $8.8 million [$69.2 million in 2011 dollars] additional cost of the 61st Street route over the 64th Street route is a reflection of engineering difficulties and dangers.

  Because of the depth of the river and the location of the underlying rock it becomes easier, less hazardous and less expensive to build the tunnel as we go north from 61st Street.89

  The seismological tests took place over the following weeks. Led by Fordham University’s seismologist, Rev. Joseph J. Lynch, test blasting took place to simulate subway construction. After receiving Rev. Lynch’s report bearing out the Institute’s concerns, the TA moved the location of the tunnel one block south to 63rd Street.90

  Dr. Detlev Bronk of the Rockefeller Institute hailed the change. Others were less enthusiastic. City Council Member Robert A. Low said the tunnel was being built “at the wrong time, at the wrong place and at the wrong facilities.”91 The Citizens Budget Commission called the tunnel “leading from nowhere to nowhere,”92 helping to give the 63rd Street line a nickname—“The Tunnel to Nowhere”—it would have for many years.

  The Board of Estimate approved the 63rd Street tunnel on January 14, 1965. O’Grady said that several connecting routes in Manhattan were under consideration, including the existing 6th Avenue and Broadway lines and new routes on 2nd or Madison Avenues. The TA was also evaluating creating connections to the Queens Boulevard line or building new lines. It would take four years to build; the TA would study the possible connections that would be done in 1966. By the time work on the tunnel was complete, O’Grady expected that the connecting lines would also be ready to operate.93 To reduce costs and save construction time, the TA planned to build the tunnel by a new method, dropping prefabricated sections into a trench dug into the riverbed.94

  As the 63rd Street tunnel was being approved, the CPC was considering how best to use it. That January, they issued Queens–Long Island Rail Transit, a report incorporating elements of Daniel L. Turner’s Metropolitan Transit System plan and TA proposals for expanded service to Queens. They proposed linking 63rd Street with the LIRR, creating what they called “Super Subway” service in Queens and suburban rapid transit to Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

  The report proposed a new system utilizing 63rd Street, its connecting routes in Manhattan and Queens, and existing LIRR tracks and right-of-way in Brooklyn and Queens and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. New “park and ride” facilities would be built in eastern Queens and Nassau County adjacent to existing or new stations. The CPC proposed instituting zone fares, seeing the fare structure as paying for improved and faster service, in many cases a one-seat ride, as opposed to the existing bus and subway system

  The CPC saw this as extending the subway system beyond the center of Queens without construction and equipment costs that stifled previous capital plans: “Extended rapid transit service in outer Queens will require a substantial subsidy from New York City due principally to the high cost of providing new facilities under the East River into Manhattan. But medium-fare super subway service, on existing railroad trackage, would result in a much lower deficit than extending new low-fare subways to the Queens–Nassau line.”95

  This tied in with work by the Special Committee on the Long Island Rail Road, set up in September 1964 by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to make recommendations for the LIRR’s future. Chaired by the governor’s secretary, Dr. William A. Ronan, the committee recommended that the state purchase the LIRR and an authority operate it. They focused on upgrading rather than expanding the existing LIRR. The one new project considered was a new East Side terminal, with Park Avenue South and East 33rd Street a possible location.96

  This was the beginning of the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority. It would become the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968, with Ronan serving as its first chairperson. The CPC expanded on its plan in November, making similar recommendations for the commuter rail lines operating from Grand Central Terminal.

  As his administration began, Mayor John V. Lindsay wanted to readdress the 61st Street plan. After consulting with his Transportation Council, however, Lindsay approved the 63rd Street Tunnel on March 7, 1966. The Council, chaired by Arthur E. Palmer, based its decision on the savings achieved by adopting the plan. They believed there would have been more traffic disruption along the FDR Drive had the tunnel been built under 61st Street.97

  The TA identified a routing for the 63rd Street line in Manhattan in October 1966. It would connect with the 6th Avenue line at 57th Street, linking with the extension of that line being built north from the 47–50th Street–Rockefeller Center station. A Queens routing wasn’t proposed, although plans for the tunnel now called for it to be built with two levels, the top for the subway and the second for the LIRR, providing them with the access to the East Side terminal that was discussed in 1963.

  More changes were about to be proposed. In a span of about five weeks, two plans harking back to the days of the BOT’s old plans were released. The first was prepared for the TA by the engineering firm of Coverdale and Colpitts, followed a few weeks later by the MTA’s “New Routes” plan.


  Figure 10-7. MTA Chairman William J. Ronan and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller at the press conference announcing the “New Routes” plan. (Photo courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Archives)

  Unlike what the CPC’s proposals in its report three years earlier, Coverdale and Colpitts and the MTA stayed within the framework of the existing rapid transit and commuter rail systems in their plans. Both proposed capital-intensive projects rather than trying to link the existing rail lines to expand the overall rail network at a lower cost, one of the CPC plan’s aims. This may have been a crucial mistake.

  Coverdale and Colpitts brought back BOT proposals from the 1940s and 1950s. They revived the 2nd Avenue line and called for connecting 63rd Street with the 2nd Avenue, 6th Avenue, and Broadway lines. Once the 63rd Street line went into Queens, a connection would be made with the Queens Boulevard line’s express tracks. Branch lines would have been built from Queens Boulevard, creating a “super express” line from Long Island City to Forest Hills and a branch line along the Long Island Expressway to Bayside, running from the Woodhaven Boulevard–Slattery Plaza station. Another branch from Queens Boulevard would use the unused part of the Rockaway Beach line to connect with other LIRR lines, the Montauk and Far Rockaway branches, to reach Springfield Boulevard in Springfield Gardens.

  Figure 10-8. An early rendering of the “New Routes” plan as it affected Brooklyn and Queens. It was later revised to drop the extension of the New Lots Avenue line and revive the Utica Avenue line.

  The MTA’s “New Routes” plan also revived the 2nd Avenue line and Charles L. Patterson’s 1956 Queens–Manhattan Trunk Line. The need for another line across Queens was in the minds of MTA planners. The 63rd Street line’s Queens route would go through Long Island City, using the right-of-way of the LIRR’s main line to reach Forest Hills, connecting there with the Queens Boulevard line. Using track ramps built for the 1929 plan’s Van Wyck Boulevard line, a route would be built to southeastern Queens along Archer Avenue and the right-of-way of the LIRR’s Far Rockaway branch. The Archer Avenue line would also have a second level connecting with the Jamaica Avenue line, replacing the service it provided from Richmond Hill to Jamaica and running to 168th Street. Another Queens Boulevard line branch would run from Elmhurst to Bayside along the Long Island Expressway. The 1950s versions of the Nostrand and Utica Avenue lines were again proposed. The LIRR’s plans for the East Side terminal were included, as well a plan for a LIRR route to John F. Kennedy International Airport.