MTA Inks Contract to take 2nd Avenue Subway Farther Uptown
The first contract of the Q line’s Phase 2, for boring new tunnels, has been awarded, but the trains won’t begin rolling until 2032. Meanwhile dozens of people will be evicted in East Harlem as the work gets underway, according to a report.
| 21 Aug 2025 | 07:53
Artist’s rendering of the 125th Street entrance to the Second Avenue Subway. (
)
Path of the Second Avenue Subway extension north under Second Avenue and then west to 125th Street and Lexington Avenue/Park Avenue, where it will connnect to the 4, 5, and 6 lines. A nearly $2-billion contract for the Phase 2 tunnel boring was announced by the MTA board on Aug. 18. (
)
Governor Kathy Hochul joins MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber at a special meeting of the MTA board at the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. The board voted to approve a $2-billion construction contract for Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway, which will extend the line to East Harlem. (
)
Artist’s rendition of the 125th Street entrance of the Second Avenue Subway, looking south. (
)
Artist’s rendering of the 106th Street station, one of three new stations slated to be built to finally complete the Second Avenue Subway. (
)
Major work on the long-awaited expansion of the Second Avenue Subway is set to begin preliminary work next month after the MTA’s board unanimously approved awarding a nearly $2-billion tunnel-boring contract for Phase 2, which will ultimately expand the Q line from 96th Street to East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue.
The Q line extension will connect with the existing 4, 5, and 6 lines, but the entire project won’t be completed until 2032. Nonetheless, it’s a start. “Next stop 125th Street,” said Governor Kathy Hochul in announcing the contract at a special MTA board meeting at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building in Harlem on Aug. 18.
“It’s been a century since the people of East Harlem were promised the new subway they deserve—and we are finally getting it done,” said Hochul.The original plan for a Second Avenue Subway was first envisioned in the 1920s but halted during the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the Second and Third Avenue elevated lines were torn down during World War II, leaving the East Side of Manhattan vastly underserved by mass transit.
“East Harlem is one of the most transit-reliant neighborhoods in New York, but every day, tens of thousands of commuters lack subway access,” Hochul acknowledged.
The governor also noted the funds for this extension are part of the $68.4-billion MTA capital plan that has already been budgeted.
Some of the tunnel work that will be included in the expansion was actually started more than 50 years ago and came to a screeching halt with the city’s mid-1970s fiscal crisis. Those tunnels ended at 120th Street and have stood abandoned and unused since then. The Q line to a new Q 96th Street station was finally opened in 2017 as part of Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway expansion.
In the latest effort to resume the job, the MTA board approved spending $1,971,968,227 for the tunneling and structural shells for the next part of the expansion. Crews under this contract will also excavate space for the future 125th Street station. A cost-containment measure will save the MTA $500 million outfitting the 1970s tunnel to accommodate the future 116th Street station, the MTA said.
The tunnel-boring contract is part of $7.7-billion Phase 2 work on the tunnel, which will expand the Second Avenue Subway from its current nexus at East 96th Street, north under Second Avenue and then west with stations at 106th and 116th streets and then to East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue/Park Avenue.
According to the New York Post, dozens will face eviction as work gets underway and the MTA seizes homes and businesses along 125th Street by eminent domain.
Preliminary work could start by mid-October, although the major tunnel boring won’t commence until 2027 while the MTA awaits the arrival of new boring equipment from Germany.
The work to bore the new tunnel, between 35 and 120 feet below Second Avenue, is expected to take place using two 750-ton machines equipped with 22-foot diamond-studded drill heads. When they start, in 2027, they expect it will be with a crew of 23 people working with each machine, and they are expected to bore through soft and hard ground at the rate of 35 to 40 feet a day.
This new contract was awarded to Connect PlusPartners, a joint venture between Halmar International and FCC Construction, the second of four construction contracts for the Q train extension.
The MTA is promising that more than 70,000 jobs, including union-wage construction jobs, will result from the Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 project with a goal of hiring 20 percent of workers locally for the project to generate good-paying job opportunities for hundreds of East Harlem residents.
Crews working under an as-yet-unassigned third contract will build the underground space for the future station at 106th Street and Second Avenue. That contract is currently in procurement.
The last one, the fourth contract, will cover the finishing of the three stations, at 106th, 116th, and 125th streets. It will also cover the systems needed to run train service, such as track, signal, power, and communications. This contract is currently being designed by the MTA.
”The time of promises are over,” Hochul said. “We are moving forward as quickly as we can.”
“It’s been a century since the people of East Harlem were promised the new subway they deserve—and we are finally getting it done.” — Governor Kathy Hochul