Westward Ho! Hochul Proposes to Extend Second Ave. Subway Along 125th Street to Broadway

Go west, young train.

The next step for the Second Avenue Subway is west across 125th Street to Broadway, Gov. Hochul will announce on Tuesday in her “State of the State” speech.

“Our efforts to extend the Second Avenue Subway will save hundreds of millions of dollars in future costs and reduce time — big wins for the 240,000 daily riders projected to benefit,” Hochul said in a statement provided by her office.

Hochul’s announcement entails new funding for the design and engineering for the estimated $7.5-billion subway expansion, which the MTA predicted will cut car use in the region by 26,000 vehicle miles traveled per day.

The westward extension of the subway will stretch all the way to 1 train on Broadway on the west side of Manhattan, connecting what is now the Q train to the 2 and 3 trains at Lenox Avenue and the A, C, B and D trains at St. Nicholas Avenue as well. The MTA included the subway extension among a number of possible projects in its “20-Year Needs Assessment” back in 2024.

The engineering and design work will cost in the double-digit millions of dollars, the governor’s office said. Having that design on hand could save the MTA hundreds of millions of dollars down the line, officials said.

The MTA is hard at work right now on extending the Q train from 96th Street to 125th Street and Lexington Avenue. With Hochul’s official backing of the Broadway-bound expansion of the train, the MTA will be able to leave the tunnel-boring machine it’s using for the current phase in place for the next phase, which should also save money. (The agency is also spending $50 million to patch up some of the remaining work that didn’t get done during the initial rush to open the Second Avenue Subway in time for a rare Andrew Cuomo subway ride on New Year’s Day in 2017, Gothamist reported on Monday.)

Hochul on Tuesday will also promote another big transit project in the city — $50 million to pay for design work for a new and improved Jamaica Station in Queens, where the subway connects to the JFK Airport AirTrain.

The Jamaica rehab aims to improve circulation in the massive hub and create better connections between the subway, bus system, Long Island Rail Road and the AirTrain. Jamaica has had some other facelifts recently, including a $65-million plan in 2016 that added new tracks and a new platform, which is currently where trains to and from Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal pull in and out of the station.

Hochul’s two-pronged announcement likely aims to burnish her legacy as a master builder of her day — a “Roberta Moses,” if you will.

Since taking office in 2021, Hochul has overseen the opening of Grand Central Madison (formerly known as East Side Access), the start of the second phase of the Second Avenue subway, preliminary work on the Interborough Express line between Brooklyn and Queens and design and groundbreaking on a new Port Authority Bus Terminal.

She’s also been a forceful advocate (then opponent, then advocate again) of congestion pricing, which itself funds billions of dollars in capital projects, and even tried (and failed) to expand Moses’s beloved Cross Bronx Expressway before Bronx environmental advocates put the kibosh on that plan.

Under Hochul, the MTA has also moved forward on the Penn Access plan that will bring four new Metro-North stations to the East Bronx.

That plan is currently caught in the MTA/Amtrak dispute vortex and will no longer be finished by 2027 as the MTA originally planned. The MTA hopes to run some Metro-North service at temporary stations starting next year.