Remarkable Photos Show New York’s First New Subway in 60 Years

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Remarkable Photos Show New York’s First New Subway in 60 Years

March 8, 2012

Photo (c) Jake Dobkin, via Gothamist.

Last night Gothamist founder Dobkin went on jealousy-inducing tour of the construction zone just under the crust of Manhattan’s East Side, where workers are blasting through bedrock to build New York’s first new subway line in a century. His photos, along with the slew of press shots the MTA has released over the past few months, show the massive scale of work going on directly below the feet of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Read on.

Waterproofing the tunnels, via The Launch Box.

The Second Avenue subway is seventy years in the making, with nearly as many false starts and delays. The last completed full route was the Eighth Avenue Line, in 1932. If you live in New York, you’ve probably already heard complaints from East Side residents who say the blasting is making dogs sick, destabilizing rich people’s houses, and lowering the value of rentals. What kind of work is being done on the line right now? Mainly, the MTA is using pneumatic machines to blast through the rock, removing topsoil, and installing dewatering systems and service connections. Workers securing the tunnels, structurally, follow the same basic process miners would: installing “rock bolts” that transfer load from the exterior of the rock face to the more stable interior, a little like patching a tear.

The most technologically groundbreaking revelation from the MTA might be that the new stations will be air-conditioned – an innovation that will surely result in a sharp decline of platform screaming matches and fights-to-the-death come summertime.

It’s fascinating to imagine what kind of infrastructural developments would have occurred in New York, had the momentum of the 19^th century continued unabated. The death of the manufacturing economy changed the face of the city forever, leaving bridges unbuilt and tunnels undug. But New York shouldn’t feel too bad; as Kelsey Keith noted, New York owns two of three total subway projects happening in North America right now (along with Toronto’s Spadina Subway Extension). Plus, our new trains will make stops in Nebraska.