They rattle and rattle and are not always the cleanest, but they are reliable: Every day, trains on lines 4, 5 and 6 travel almost 1.6 million New Yorkers through Manhattan – more than all subway users in Chicago and Boston together. A new line is now being built – the first in 70 years. It is already the most expensive subway in the world. And nobody knows what it will cost in the end. The route of the three lines, known from the two Hollywood films about the “Death Ride of the U-Bahn 123”, is considered to be completely overloaded, so help is needed now. Several thousand men dig their way from top to bottom through Manhattan, through one of the most densely populated areas in the western world.
The mammoth project is controversial. But digging continues. Plans for the line have been around for a little longer – since 1929. Construction began exactly 80 years later. The subway line is said to be almost 14 kilometers long, from 125th Street in Harlem high up to Hanover Square right down in Manhattan. It is estimated that the project will cost at least 17 billion dollars (15.5 billion euros). That is half of the defense budget of the Federal Republic of Germany. Or another comparison: The Stuttgart 21 projects, which are controversial because of their costs, and the ICE route from Nuremberg to Berlin, a good 500 kilometers, cost exactly as much as the 14 kilometers under New York.
New subway in New York more expensive than Panama Canal
Even the Panama Canal was cheaper, even in terms of today’s monetary value. “We have the specific plan for the line, but the money is simply not there for phases 2, 3 and 4. If it comes, we’ll get started right away, ”says Amanda Kwan of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA is New York’s transportation company that carries more than eleven million people every day. When does the money come? Shrug. It’s about years. Many years. “We are 84 percent finished with phase 1,” says Michael Horodniceanu. The construction manager climbs hundreds of steps every day looking for defects in phase 1. It goes from 96th in a wide sweep to 57th Street, not far from Times Square, and costs more than 4.1 billion dollars alone. Horodniceanu emphasizes that it is on schedule. It should be done in December next year. The tracks are already in place. The concrete around them is light gray, almost white. No comparison to the rest of the New York subway tunnels, most of which are over 100 years old. There are no animals here. “Rats don’t like concrete,” says Horodniceanu. “They like food. If people didn’t throw away any food, there wouldn’t be any rats on the subway. ”
There will be no toilets in the subway
Apparently New Yorkers throw away a lot of food. The drills had eaten up at 20 meters a day. In some places, 40 meters below Manhattan, workers encountered much more water than expected. The ground had to be frozen in order to continue. The men somehow managed to get 352,000 cubic meters of earth and 450,000 cubic meters of rock to the top. It’s New York’s first new subway in 70 years. “Everything will get better,” promises Horodniceanu. The new stations are to have air conditioning. “In the old stations, the trains press the heat into the stations like pistons. That’s why it’s 40 degrees when it’s 30 degrees outside, ”he explains. Some stations are a good 400 meters long, but toilets will not be available either (“With so many people, you just can’t keep them clean”). And the trains of the MTA, modern or not, will continue to have drivers.
New Yorkers annoyed by the construction of the new subway
But the new subway has caused a lot of resentment. New Yorkers are used to a lot of noise, but drills and diggers that roar through one of the most densely populated areas of the United States until 10 p.m. were too much. Dealers complained that their customers were running away. “My shop has been hidden behind a site fence for years,” says an optician. “I can forget walk-in customers.” And a restaurant operator is also angry: “Not only that our restaurant looks uninviting with the construction site. I can’t put any chairs outside either, for the third summer in a row. ”Horodniceanu listens to the worries that there is nothing he can do. “Our research has shown that there is just as much empty space on the first and third avenues. So it can’t be up to us. ”Besides, the Second Avenue Line is not an end in itself. “When we’re done, the quality of life here increases enormously.” (dpa)
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