Major milestone for Second Ave. subway

With a guttural rumbling and in a heavy cloud of dust, a tunnel-boring machine burst through a wall at the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station on the Upper East Side Thursday morning, realizing a construction milestone in the Second Avenue subway project.

"You see the Second Avenue subway taking shape right before our eyes," said outgoing MTA chairman Jay Walder. "Today, to watch it break through -- a long-awaited event -- is really wonderful."

The new tunnel from East 96th Street to East 63rd Street, through which a northbound extension of the Q train will eventually run, and its connection to an operating station, marked the end of tunneling in the $4.45-billion project, MTA officials said.

Other tunnels needed for the Second Avenue subway had already existed, they said.

The 485-ton machine, which averaged 60 feet per day, began mining the first of the two Q extension tunnels, one meant for a southbound train, in May 2010. Its tunneling task on the Second Avenue line ended Thursday as it whirled to a dramatic stop.

About 100 officials, contractors and consultants associated with the project braved the muddy underground to witness the event, all of them decked out in construction helmets and safety vests and many of them capturing the moment on cellphone cameras.

"This is big stuff for us. Our guys are excited," said Christopher Fitzsimmons, training director of Local 147 of the Laborer's International Union of North America, the urban miners union nicknamed the "Sandhogs." "We've been blessed with work in a bad economy."

Plans for the Second Avenue subway, which will introduce T trains to the system and reduce overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue line, began in other bad economic times, during the Great Depression. They were revived anew in the late 1990s.

MTA officials broke ground for the first phase -- which includes tunnels from 105th Street and Second Avenue to 63rd Street and Third Avenue and three new stations -- in 2007. Those tunnels are expected to be ready to serve about 200,000 riders daily in December 2016.

The project has been plagued with controversies including loud, disruptive construction marring the soundscape above ground; the negative economic impact on businesses along the Second Avenue construction zone; delays and ballooning costs.

MTA capital construction president Michael Horodniceanu said Thursday the first phase is going according to plan.

"It will be on budget and it will be done December 2016," he said.