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Maloney, mayor criticize MTA on Second Ave. subway delay

By Philip Newman

U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-Astoria) and Charles Rangel (D-East Harlem) have expressed disappointment and chagrin at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to delay completion of the second phase of the Second Avenue subway to East Harlem.

In reply, MTA Chairman Prendergast said his agency was already actively “looking for ways to deliver the project faster.”

Phase 2 of the subway to 125th Street and Second Avenue was to have been completed by December 2019. The Harlem extension will now be delayed until at least 2020.

In a letter to the Prendercast, the lawmakers said: “We understand the MTA will be moving forward with preliminary engineering and design, but it is disappointing to know that this project is once again being short-changed.”

Under the agreement that the city and state reached to fund the MTA’s $32 billion capital plan, about one half of the $3 billion in reductions came from the Second Avenue subway project, particularly the extension to East Harlem in Rangel’s congressional district.

Maloney has promoted the Second Avenue line since its planning stage

“We have committed that if we can speed up the schedule to begin tunneling the East Harlem phase sooner, we will pursue a capital program amendment to do so,” Prendergast said in rely to the lawmakers.

“Gov. Cuomo had made it clear that he would like us to accelerate work on the Second Avenue subway and we are actively looking for ways to deliver the project faster,” the MTA chairman said.

Rangel and Maloney were skeptical about the outlook for the project.

“As you know, the long history of the Second Avenue subway has involved repeated incidents of funding allocated and withdrawn, plans made and canceled, ground breakings celebrated and construction halted,” they said “We hope that this substantial funding cut does not signal the MTA’s lack of commitment to building Phase 2 of the project.”

Maloney and Rangel included 15 questions to the MTA concerning the new subway line, which is designed to relieve crowding on the Lexington line. The 4, 5 and 6 carry 42 percent of all subway passengers in New York City.

The first phase of the new subway is scheduled to open in December 2016 with trains running along Second Avenue from 96th Street to 63rd Street via three new stations on the Upper East Side. The timetable for the second phase bringing the new line to 125th Street has been uncertain.

The news that the MTA planned to delay the scheduled opening of Phase 2 of the new subway line came last week when the transit agency issued its 200-page Capital Program for the period from 2015 to 2019..

Mayor Bill De Blasio said the MTA should take another look at its decision to delay the subway’s extension to East Harlem.

“I think that has to be reconsidered despite the challenges and complexities to move Phase 2 as quickly as it can be done,” De Blasio said.