A draft rendering of the Q train platform planned for 125th Street and Lexington Avenue.
MTA
Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed extending the Second Avenue Subway project west on 125th Street — aiming to build three new stations on a new crosstown stretch connecting riders from downtown and the Bronx with the Q line heading down the east side.
The governor announced her backing for the incipient scheme in her State of the State address in Albany Tuesday.
“Governor Hochul knows New York needs another crosstown rail connection,” reads the governor’s 2024 State of the State policy book. “And we can’t wait another decade to begin planning it.”
The line would include three new stops on 125th Street at Lenox Avenue, St. Nicholas Avenue and Broadway — connecting the Q train to the 1, 2, 3, A, B, C, and D lines, plus a smattering of bus routes.
Of course, the proposal — first reported by Gothamist on Tuesday — is just that, and any work on actually building the project is many years and reviews away.
The MTA received $3.4 billion in federal grants last year to extend the Q train from 96th Street and 2nd Avenue to 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, where it will connect with the 4,5, and 6 trains; construction is set to start soon but completion shouldn’t be expected for many years.
Phase 2, as the extension to 125th and Lexington is known, first saw a completed environmental review all the way back in 2004. The Second Avenue Subway project itself had incubated since the 1920s, and the first phase to 96th Street was finally completed in 2017.
The total cost of Phase 2 is estimated at $7.7 billion, including the cost of servicing debt. In its recent 20-year needs assessment, the MTA estimated the cost of extending the Q westward to Broadway would be $7.55 billion.
But while the dream had long been extending the Second Avenue Subway southward to Lower Manhattan, providing service to east side residents who currently schlep to the Lexington line, the
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