NEW YORK - You must forgive New Yorkers a little scepticism when the city breaks ground today on a whole new underground line that intheory will run the length of Manhattan down its east side from the Bronx to the financial district. The older ones have seen itall before - three times before, in fact.
Some still recall a September day in 1972 when the then Mayor of New York, John Lindsay, and Governor Nelson Rockefeller punctured the pavement with pickaxes at 103rd St and declared that plans for the so-called 2nd Avenue Subway Line were at last resurrected. It was third time lucky even then.
The line was first approved by city fathers in 1929 with a budget of US$99 million, but the Depression soon stopped it in its tracks. A second attempt begun after World War II similarly became bogged down in funding realities.
In the 70s it was the city going bust that halted work, but not before sections of tunnel were completed above 100th St that have remained sealed ever since. It is into one of these that the present Governor, Eliot Spitzer, will climb with other dignitaries to, as it were, get things rolling again.
The outlook for the line does seem a little more promising, not least because the federal Government is willing to provide a chunk of the US$3.8 billion required. If all goes well, phase one of the new line should be open by 2013, relieving congestion on the green line beneath Lexington Ave. The Lexington line accounts for about 40 per cent of all city subway riders.
"I sure hope they do it this time, because time is moving on," noted William Ronan, who was the chairman of the Metropolitan Transport Authority, the agency that runs New York's subways, back in 1972. "There used to be a saying in New York, 'I should live so long."'
