Transit Authority

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The New York Sun

Q: Now that the bond passed and – if the hype is to be believed – the Second Avenue subway will finally be built, what letter or number will be assigned to it?


A: Officially, no designation has been made, but a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Tom Kelly, confirmed widespread and long heard rumors that the likeliest designation is the letter T. He would not, however, confirm the color the line is rumored to be assigned: turquoise. The first $3.8 billion phase of the $16 billion project will run from 96th Street to 63rd Street, where it will veer west and connect with the Q line. At that point, the new line will likely be subsumed by the Q, which will end at 96th Street rather than its current terminus at 57th Street. Eventually, the line will run from 125th Street in Harlem to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan.


The theory that the letter T was chosen because it was the last remaining letter not already used at one point in the subway is wrong. The letter T was used for a now-defunct branch of the M line. Other letters that are not currently in use include H, I, K, O, P, X, and Y. The letters I and O are generally considered unusable because they resemble the numbers 1 and 0. P was considered in the 1990s for a shuttle between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Penn Station. Some say that effort was abandoned because no one wanted to tell strangers to “go to 34th Street and take a P.” Or, when the lettered lines had two letters to designate local service, you would have had to take a “P P to Penn Station.” Officials at the MTA, however, would not confirm this claim.



E-mail your transit questions to transit@nysun.com.


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