Mid-December Start For Work on No. 7 Train

By GRACE RAUH, Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 4, 2007

Construction on the no. 7 subway extension is scheduled to start by the middle of the month, opening the way for the city's most ambitious neighborhood redevelopment project since the end of World War II, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

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Richard Drew/AP

A new sign is unveiled during ceremonies for the extension of New York's no. 7 subway line, in the Times Square subway station. From left: Rep. Jerrold Nadler; Governor Spitzer; Mayor Bloomberg; Council Speaker Christine Quinn; the executive director of the MTA, Lee Sander, and the MTA chairman, Dale Hemmerdinger.

The city will pay for the $2.1 billion subway extension, which will connect the subway to a new station at 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue from its final stop at Times Square and Seventh Avenue. The economic development from the 1 1/2 mile extension, which will run west along 41st Street to Eleventh Avenue and then turn south toward 34th Street, will bring in approximately $60 billion in tax revenues over the next 30 years and will add hundreds of thousands of new jobs in construction and other fields, according to city estimates.

Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said the city is "pretty optimistic" that the extension will be completed within the budget, but said that if it is not, the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority "will sit down together and figure it out."

In 2005, the city rezoned the far West Side of Manhattan, laying the groundwork for more than 40 million square feet of development, including 13,500 new apartments.