Content area
Full Text
The 63rd Street Queens Connector will add 15 trains per hour between Queens and downtown Manhattan, providing a solution to a decades--old overcrowing problem.
In 1969, New York City Transit (NYCT) began construction of a new subway link to Manhattan from the eastern reaches of Queens to alleviate congestion on the Queens Boulevard line. Called the Queens Super Express, the connector consisted of an immersed-tube tunnel under the East River, land-based tunnels on both sides of the river, and a two-track, grade-level line to Continental Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens. The tunnels into Queens were made up of four tracks-two over two-the upper tracks for NYCT use and the lower ones for future use by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) commuter line.
Funding issues, however, prevented this route, called the 63rd Street Line, from being completed as planned on the Queens side, and so it was terminated at the 21st Street station. The partially finished line was put into service in 1989 by NYCT, but it had only a small ridership in Queens and was severely underused. Dubbed the tunnel to nowhere because it did not fully link Manhattan and Queens, the connector failed to accomplish its original purpose of relieving congestion on the Queens Boulevard line.
In 1990, to relieve the overcrowding problem, NYCT planners and engineers conceived the 63rd Street Queens Connector project, which will use a two-track tunnel (see figure 1) to connect the end of the underutilized line to the existing, overcrowded local and express trains of the Queens Boulevard line.
Though only a third of a mile is needed to connect the two subway lines, the project is situated in subterranean infrastructure so complex that its completion will have required seven years and $650 million. It is on schedule to begin operation in August 2001.
To provide smaller construction contracts, better management control, and increased competitiveness between contractors, the connector project was divided into four major construction packages. The first three contracts covered construction of the new tunnels and ventilation fan plants and were divided geographically. The contract for the northern portion of the project went to Slattery/Perini Joint Venture, New York City. Laquila Construction Company, also of New York City, was awarded the central and southern portions....