NEW YORK, NY — Governor Kathy Hochul joined leadership from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), elected officials, and Harlem community leaders to break ground on the major construction stage of the Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 project. The groundbreaking occurred at the location where, in early 2027, the tunnel boring machine (TBM) will be lowered into the ground and begin mining the new subway tunnels from 120 Street and 2nd Avenue to 125 Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.
The governor also announces that, following the resumption of federal funding to the project, the MTA has awarded the next major contract to the joint venture of Skanska, Traylor Bros. Inc., and Walsh Construction. The team will construct the final tunnel section of this phase from 105 Street to 110 Street, including the future 106 Street Station, using a “cut and cover” approach. The MTA is applying lessons from Phase 1 of the project to deliver more than $1 billion in savings and is on track to complete advanced utility relocations early, allowing pending work on this project to start six months faster than originally scheduled.
“The Second Avenue Subway will change everything for East Harlem, saving people precious time and making possible opportunities that have for too long been out of reach for too many,” Hochul said. “The last groundbreaking for a second avenue subway in East Harlem was 54 years ago, only for the project to be abandoned and this community left behind. When I became Governor, I promised that I would be the leader to finally get this done, and by breaking ground on the major construction phase of this project, we are one giant step closer to realizing a dream nearly a century in the making.”
"It was 80 years ago they started knocking down the Second Avenue El — an entire lifetime," MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said. "[This] groundbreaking is another major step toward transit justice for East Harlem, the city's most transit-dependent community."
The second phase of the project will extend Q train service from 96 Street north to 125 Street and then west on 125 Street to Park Avenue, approximately 1.5 miles in total. There will be a direct passenger connection with the existing 125 Street subway station on the Lexington Avenue subway line. Phase 2 will also feature an entrance at Park Avenue to allow transfers to the Metro-North Railroad’s Harlem-125 Street Station.
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Each station will have above-ground ancillary buildings that house ventilation, mechanical, and electrical equipment, as well as space for possible ground-floor retail and community uses. The expansion will serve 300,000 daily riders when combined with Phase 1 and will provide three new ADA accessible stations. Increased multimodal transit connectivity at the 125 Street station at Park Avenue with connections to the 4 5 6 lines, Metro-North, and the M60 Select Bus Service to LaGuardia Airport will allow for transfers to other subway and commuter rail lines, facilitating smoother, faster transportation across the city and metropolitan region.
The variable-density Tunnel Boring Machines will be delivered early next year. Weighing more than 1.5 million pounds, the machines are equipped with 23-foot, tungsten carbide cutter heads. The TBM can adjust its methods depending on what kind of material it encounters, toggling between one kind of drill for hard rock and another for soft soil or sand. The TBM also reinforces the tunnel lining it leaves behind as it travels beneath Harlem. The TBM will launch from the 120 Street site and travel to 125 Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.
Concurrent to the groundbreaking milestone on the Phase 2 project, Hochul and the MTA are already scoping and designing a potential next phase of the Q train westward across 125th Street to Broadway with three new stations and more than 160,000 daily riders. Following the completion of an MTA feasibility study announced by the governor in 2024, this year’s fiscal year 2027 enacted state budget secured $25 million to conduct preliminary engineering and design of a tunnel extension and approval of an efficient environmental review process. If the project is advanced, work on the tunnel could continue using much of the same equipment from phase 2, saving time and money.
Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 is divided into four contracts — compared to 10 in Phase 1 — to increase project efficiency and minimize complicated contractor coordination. The tunnel boring is part of Contract 2, valued at $1.97 billion, including shaft excavation for the TBM, controlled blasting for future stations, and asbestos and lead abatement in the existing 1970s tunnels. The entire Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 project is budgeted at $6.968 billion and is on track for revenue service in 2032.
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"The new MTA is delivering on the long-standing promise to bring subway service to the East Harlem community," President of MTA Construction & Development Jamie Torres-Springer said. "By applying lessons learned from Phase 1, we’re delivering this project better, faster, and cheaper — with more than $1 billion in savings to date."
