New York Built the World’s Most Expensive Subway

new york city is home some of the world's most iconic buildings [Music] but its most impressive structure might actually be right here underground [Music] with the swipe of a metro card you can ride from the bronx to midtown to brooklyn to queens all on the same network but it's not always seamless ladies and gentlemen we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us now new york is undergoing its biggest subway expansion in 50 years with the 2nd avenue subway this stretch between 63rd street and 96th was completed in 2017 and it cost 1.7 billion dollars per kilometer yes that's billion with a b and that's just phase one of the project there are plans to extend the line even further uptown from 96th street to 125th now the newly passed u.s infrastructure bill could help fund the six billion dollar price tag on phase two of course there's the challenge of building beneath the city that never sleeps dodging layers of existing underground infrastructure and maneuvering tunnel boring machines across manhattan it took nearly a hundred years to complete the first few kilometers of the second avenue subway so can new york do it all again [Music] new york subway system helped make the city a world leader in urban transportation almost any section of the city is within easy walking distance of a subway station today there are more than 470 stations across four boroughs that's more than any other underground system in the world in recent decades though the subways lost its edge over other cities with more reliable networks tokyo has built an uber efficient subway system that takes reliability to a whole new level many cities like london hong kong and sydney have smart ticketing systems seoul and shanghai have step free access at 100 of their stations new york not so much accessibility is notoriously bad across the network the city just recently got contact payment technology in its stations the trains can get crowded tunnels are deteriorating delays are inevitable and projects to fix it have a tendency to go way over budget when we say this moment has been a long time in the making we mean a really really long time the idea for a second avenue subway was first tabled in 1920. the city put a budget together for it in 1929 and then the great depression hit just when it looked like the economy had recovered and construction was about to begin world war ii kicked off and the project was delayed again on second avenue for example work is getting underway on a new subway line that will run from the bronx all the way down to the tip of manhattan that video is from 1973. for nearly a century the second avenue subway was proposed postponed started stopped and pushed further down the priority list meanwhile subway access on the east side of manhattan began to lag behind the rest of the city finally in 2006 federal funding was approved and construction on the second avenue subway began again in 2007. [Music] in all the new line is envisioned to stretch across the entire east side from 125th street in east harlem to hanover square in downtown and it'll be constructed in four separate phases so far they've gotten through phase one it extends the existing q train from 63rd street to 96th street the station at lexington and 63rd street was upgraded and modernized and new stations were built around 72nd 86th and 96th streets phase two of the second avenue subway would extend the q train even further up down to 125th street building three new stations at 106th 116th and 125th streets the aim is to reduce overcrowding and delays and improve accessibility at the stations almost 200 000 people are estimated to use the new line that was built for phase one but getting approval for phase two might be tricky especially given how much time and money it's taken to complete phase one in fact it took so much time and money that at one stage the second avenue subway was the world's most expensive subway track that's until it was overtaken by new york's other scheme the east side access project just down the road now there's a few reasons why the new stations and roughly three kilometers of track had a 4.5 billion dollar price tag firstly building in new york is expensive construction costs are generally higher here compared to other cities and countries new york is one of the most densely populated cities in the world which means any construction is probably going to affect a lot of people's daily lives and below ground there's a maze of building foundations sewer pipes power lines and existing subway lines to avoid back in the old days of building the subway construction crews would shut down the entire street for excavation but that kind of approach won't really fly today it's loud and disruptive for the many people who now live and work in the area instead the crew used tunnel boring machines they could lower into the ground and drill through the hard rock for almost 40 blocks without people above ground even noticing but the most expensive element wasn't actually the twin track tunneling roughly half of the budget went towards building the new stations they're some of the largest underground excavations in america before blasting the crew reinforced some of the nearby buildings to protect them from the force construction teams then drilled blasted and reinforced the inside of the caverns all our people lived and worked in the buildings just above ground once those caverns were cleared and the tracks laid designers worked to specially construct the new stations to dull the sound of the rattling subway cars that new yorkers know all too well instead of the echo-prone tyre and stone that's used in other stations across the city engineering firm arab lined the new station's ceilings with metal panels backed with sound absorbing fiberglass when the second avenue subway was first put forward back in the 1920s designers planners and politicians were probably all working off some paper drawings that needed to be passed around for approval now after a hundred years of updated designs budgets and teams a paper filing system isn't going to cut it that's where digital platforms like autodesk build become essential it's a construction management platform that's easy to use for teams whether they're in the office on their desktop or deep low ground with a tablet teams can control who has access to what information and make sure everyone's working for the most up-to-date data it's a single source of truth that's all updated in the cloud as america sets out to rebuild its aging infrastructure tools like this will be key making sure projects run on time and on budget is crucial for the second avenue subway especially as it has so many phases left to complete we reached out to a range of organizations asking for an interview for this video but no one wanted to talk about phase two despite the challenges the full second avenue subway could have a huge impact on new york extending the q train to 125th street would better connect east harlem with the rest of the city the long-term benefits this project could bring to commuters and the city have the potential to long outlive the political and construction complexities of today the subway system has been a quintessential part of new york city for generations but now it's up to new york to make sure that it remains fit for generations to come this video was made possible by autodesk construction cloud you can learn more about auster's build at the link below and as always guys if you want to get more from the definitive video channel for awesome projects like this make sure you subscribe to the b1m more playful with that at the end [Music]

Channel: The B1M

Views: 734,005

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, nyc, new york, mta, subway, nyc subway, q train, second av subway, subway history, infrastructure, railways

Id: 8Y4Rkz-3Uj8

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/UrbanPlannerholic]

I can't tell if contracting out to private firms for architectural and engineering services is better than doing all the work in house. It's a shame we don't have a national public infrastructure building department but I guess that could get messy too.

[u/AnyTower224]

How about we stop with these deep ass tunnels and go back to the basics of cut and cover