Congestion pricing: Work completely halted on Second Avenue Subway extension following Hochul pause

Work has been completely halted on the Second Avenue Subway extension to 125th Street in the aftermath of Gov. Kathy Hochul halting congestion pricing earlier this month, MTA officials confirmed on Tuesday.

MTA construction chief Jamie Torres-Springer told reporters at an unrelated press conference that the existing $182 million contract for utility relocation under Second Avenue, awarded to Queens firm CAC, has been issued a stop-work order in the wake of the governor’s June 5 decision to indefinitely pause the Manhattan toll program.

“We have stopped work on Second Avenue Subway,” Torres-Springer confirmed.

The news came just hours after Hochul said she still wants to see projects like the Second Avenue Subway project completed even during the pause.

Portions of the Second Avenue bike lane had already been temporarily relocated to First Avenue so that CAC could begin relocating utilities in preparation for excavating a future Q train stop at 106th Street, Torres-Springer said. “We’ve stopped them from doing that excavation,” he added.

The Second Avenue Subway extension was perhaps the marquee project that congestion pricing was set to fund, but its future is now in limbo.

The MTA was set to fund $4.3 billion of the $7.7 billion project with congestion pricing money, with the feds kicking in $3.4 billion in grants that are also now in danger of being lost. The MTA could also be forced to eat its losses for what has already been spent on the contract.

The utility relocation contract was the only one that had already been awarded for the Second Avenue Subway megaproject; the MTA had already put new contract awards on ice, owing to a slew of lawsuits filed attempting to stop the toll.

But while judges were expected to rule on those suits before the anticipated June 30 start date, Hochul’s pause puts the Q extension in indefinite flux. 

Meanwhile, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said last week that the transit agency will need to “reprioritize and shrink” its capital spending to focus on the most urgent projects and prevent the system from “falling apart,” rather than work to modernize and expand it as previously intended.

MTA Deputy Chief Development Officer Tim Mulligan is set to present a plan to the MTA Board on June 26 detailing how the agency will shrink its spending for the rest of the 2024 Capital Plan, which has $28 billion in project priorities outlined but now only $13 billion to spend.

Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress, said the pause could seriously imperil employment in the construction industry and forecasted a “ripple effect” throughout the region’s economy.  The Second Avenue Subway project alone was projected to employ thousands of workers, he said, while the MTA has estimated congestion pricing would support 20,000 jobs in the New York region, many but not all in construction.

“It’s a sad day in New York, it’s a sad day for riders, it’s a sad day for construction workers, and really I think it’s a moment of reckoning,” Scissura told amNewYork Metro. “Because this is not the first contract that’s gonna get pulled.”

Spokespersons for Hochul did not return a request for comment. The news was first reported Tuesday by Streetsblog.