Buttigieg approves $3.4B grant for 2nd Avenue subway, less than half the project’s cost

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg signed off on a $3.4 billion grant for the MTA’s extension of the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem Saturday, marking the latest step forward for a project New York officials first started planning nearly a century ago.

The federal money covers less than half of the $7.7 billion estimated cost for the extension, which aims to add three new stops to the Q line, which currently terminates at East 96th Street. The MTA plans to build a new terminal for the line at Lexington Avenue and East 125th Street, with two other stops at East 116th and East 106th Streets.

“I know it was a long, long, long time coming, but here we are,” Buttigieg said at a news conference on East 125th Street. “There has been such passion about this in a community that has been promised a subway line since the old elevated line was pulled down 80 years ago.”

MTA officials have already put out bids for a contract to relocate utilities in the area where the subway extension is planned. And much of the line has already been built. The MTA, in the 1970s, built out tunnels beneath Second Avenue between 110th and 120th Streets, but the agency abandoned work on the project in 1974 as the city faced a financial crisis.

MTA officials have said it will take at least seven years before the extension is complete.

The project’s high cost has drawn criticism — and a study published by NYU researchers last year found the Second Avenue subway extension was on pace to be one of the most expensive mass transit construction projects in the history of the world.

The new tracks will span 1.8 miles, and the MTA will spend roughly $4.3 billion per mile of track, or about $814,000 per foot. That means the $3.4 billion Buttigieg signed off on Saturday is enough to pay for just over three-quarters of a mile worth of subway.

In a gaggle with reporters, Buttigieg defended the sky-high price, but acknowledged the growing costs to build public works projects is a big problem for the country.

“America has struggled to deliver infrastructure as cost effectively as other places around the world, which is why a major line of effort in our department is to find all of the means that we have, whether that’s on the bureaucratic side or on the engineering side, to accelerate and improve the cost effectiveness of our infrastructure spending,” he said.

But the secretary attempted a positive spin on the Second Avenue project.

“On a per-passenger basis, it can actually be less expensive than a lot of other projects,” Buttigieg said.

The MTA previously planned to extend the subway line to the south after the East Harlem project was finished — but transit officials are now indicating they may be changing course.

The MTA published its 20-year needs assessment last month, which lays out which of the agency’s planned expansion projects are given the highest priority. The document shows MTA planners believe extending the Q line across 125th Street into West Harlem would help more riders than the downtown extension of the Second Avenue subway.

Buttigieg was joined Saturday by some of New York’s top elected officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Jerrold Nadler — as well as Harlem’s former Congressman Charlie Rangel. Mayor Eric Adams, who canceled a trip to Washington this week amid a federal probe into his campaign fundraising, was not in attendance.