New York’s Second Avenue Subway: New Q Line extension opens on Jan. 1 - TomoNews

2016-12-29 1

NEW YORK — After almost a century of delays, the first phase of the Second Avenue subway is set to open for service on Jan. 1, officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.

The new line is an extension of the Q line, which currently stops at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue and will run along Manhattan’s East Side, the New York Times reported.

Beginning in January, Q trains will travel to a station at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street and then to three new stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets.

They have been under construction since 2007, although planning for the project as a whole dates all the way back to 1929, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The first phase of the project cost around $4.4 billion, reported the New York Times.

The MTA is expecting the new route to carry 200,000 riders each day, which should ease overcrowding on the No. 4, 5 and 6 lines along the Lexington Avenue route, which carry 1.3 million commuters daily, AM New York reported.

The second phase of the project is in the initial planning stages, and would extend the line to 125th Street in Harlem, according to the New York Times. However, the second phase will cost billions of dollars and take several years to complete, while plans to extend the line to Lower Manhattan are less certain.