NYC finally gets its ‘forgotten’ Subway

New York City had to wait nearly 100 years for the Second Avenue Subway

The first day of 2017 brought New Yorkers a belated Christmas gift, one that their city had been promising for almost a century. First proposed in 1919, the Second Avenue Subway (SAS) was part of a plan to accommodate the post-war explosion in passenger numbers using the system, which had risen to 1.3bn by 1920.

At the time, the Upper East Side was served by elevated trains on both Second and Third avenues. Initial plans called for the demolition of both, and a brand-new subway line connecting Harlem in the north to the financial district in the south, as well as spurs extending out to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. But by the time both ‘Els’ had disappeared mid-century, there was still no sign of the SAS. Work eventually got underway in the 1970s, but New York’s fiscal crisis soon saw it grind to a halt. The SAS became ‘the line that time forgot’, an in-joke among New Yorkers: “I’ll pay you back that money when they finish the Second Avenue Subway.”