October 8, 2007
M.T.A. Says Mayor's Plan to Ease Traffic Will Cost $767 Million to Accomplish
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to ease traffic congestion by charging motorists who drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan would cost hundreds of millions of dollars for new bus and subway services and mass transit improvements to accommodate tens of thousands of new riders, transportation officials say.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in a report to a commission created to evaluate the mayor's plan, estimated that expanded transit service and capital improvements for city and suburban riders who would give up their cars to get into Manhattan over the next five years would cost $767 million.

The total, the authority said, comprised $284 million in 2008 and 2009 for 367 new city and suburban buses, 46 new subway cars and many station renovations and service enhancements; $163 million for other subway and bus improvements from 2010 to 2012, and $320 million for two new bus terminals in Queens and Staten Island.

April 9, 2007
Is That Finally the Sound of a 2nd Ave. Subway?
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
The neckties are wide and the sideburns long, the pickaxes gleam in the sunlight. The governor thanks the president for providing money. The mayor jokes that "whatever is said about this project in the years to come, certainly no one can say that the city acted rashly or without due deliberation."
The governor swings his pickax, but the pavement is too hard. A jackhammer is brought in to loosen things up. Now the governor and the mayor lay to with gusto.
The Second Avenue subway is born.
Or so it seemed at the time.
The sideburns were long and the neckties wide because it was 1972. The president was Nixon. The governor was Rockefeller. The mayor was Lindsay. And nearly 35 years later, no trains have ever run under Second Avenue.
But the line has had at least three groundbreakings.
On Thursday it will get another one.