M.T.A. Approves Major Contract to Expand the Second Avenue Subway Line

Transit officials in New York City on Monday approved a $1.97 billion construction contract to start the majority of the next phase of the expansion of the Second Avenue subway line, a long-promised transportation project that is among the world’s most expensive.

Board members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the city’s transit system, voted to greenlight the contract, which was awarded to Connect Plus Partners, a partnership between two construction firms. Early work is scheduled to begin later this year, with the digging of a new tunnel set to start in 2027. This latest agreement is one of the four construction contracts that will make up the second phase of the project, according to an M.T.A. presentation made to transit officials last week.

The first phase of the subway line opened in 2017 and stopped at East 96th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Politicians have promised for nearly a century to extend the line farther north to East Harlem, a working-class enclave. The planned extension will add three subway stations along the Q line at 106th, 116th, and 125th Streets. It will give a historically neglected community more transit options and shift passengers away from some of the country’s most crowded train lines.

But the project was thrown in doubt last year. The M.T.A. paused work on the roughly $7 billion project in June 2024, after Gov. Kathy Hochul indefinitely suspended the congestion pricing tolling program, which was expected to help provide roughly $3.5 billion for the subway line extension. The tolling program, which charges drivers to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, eventually began in January after Ms. Hochul reversed course.

Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, announced the approval of the contract on Monday after the vote.

“It has been a century since the people of East Harlem were promised the new subway they deserve, and we are finally getting it done,” she said in a statement.

The latest contract funds the digging of tunnels between the planned stations at 116th Street and 125th Street, as well as a connection between the subway line and the Metro-North station at 125th and Park Avenue, the governor’s office wrote in a news release. The station at 106th Street will be built under a different contract.

The Second Avenue subway was first proposed in 1929, but the Great Depression and other economic hardships in the decades that followed delayed progress. In the 1970s, a tunnel was built between 110th and 120th Streets, but construction was abandoned when New York City ran out of money. Decades later, in 2007, the city began construction on what would become Phase 1 of the current project.

Janno Lieber, the head of the M.T.A., said in a statement that the board had voted to move forward “with the largest tunneling contract in agency history.”

The addition of three subway stations above 96th Street will make commutes easier for more than 100,000 East Harlem residents, whose closest subway stations are a long walk away; there is currently no subway service to the neighborhood east of Lexington Avenue.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that in total, Phase 1 of the project, which extended the Q line from 63rd Street to 96th Street, and Phase 2 would serve over 300,000 people.

Lisa Daglian, the executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the M.T.A., a watchdog group, said the transit agency had worked hard to make the second phase transparent. She said she hoped such transparency would appease critics who are wary of its multibillion-dollar costs.

“As the shovels get in the ground, as the project progresses, all eyes will be on this,” Ms. Daglian said.

Jamie Torres-Springer, the M.T.A.’s head of construction and development, said the authority had gained valuable insights from the first phase. “Using lessons learned from Phase 1, we’re excited to keep our momentum going and complete this contract better, faster and cheaper than ever,” he said.

A New York Times investigation published in 2017 showed that at $2.5 billion per mile, construction for the first section of the Second Avenue subway cost more than almost every other transit project in the world at the time. In total, that section cost more than $4.4 billion.

Ms. Hochul said that state officials had trimmed costs for the latest leg of the project. For example, to construct the proposed 116th Street station, builders plan to repurpose tunnels from the 1970s that were set to be demolished, potentially saving the M.T.A. $500 million, she said.

The project, Mr. Lieber said in the board meeting on Monday, “is by far the lowest cost per rider of any heavy rail project in the United States.”

Despite some delays in construction after Ms. Hochul initially paused congestion pricing, Phase 2 remains on schedule and on budget, and it is expected to begin serving riders in the fall of 2032, a spokesman for the governor said.