New Yorkers will finally get a chance to ride on the long-awaited Second Avenue subway at the start of the new year.
The grand opening has had almost a century worth of delays, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed on Twitter that the first phase of the line will open January 1. New Yorkers can already see the new line on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s subway map.
MTA gave us a sneak preview of the subway and some of its beautiful artwork created by high-profile artists – scroll down for a closer look.
The Second Avenue subway line is a three-stop extension of the Q. Starting in the New Year, the line will travel beyond Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street to service new stations at 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets.
The grand opening marks the first phase of the Second Avenue subway line extension. The second phase will extend the Q an additional three stops to 125th Street in Harlem, but that won’t come for a number of years.
Source: New York Times
The line may eventually extend to Lower Manhattan as well.
The new subway line is expected to service 200,000 riders.
Source: MTA
The project, in total, costed roughly $4.4 billion.
The Q extension is expected to ease congestion on the 4, 5, and 6 lines along Lexington Avenue.
The Lexington Avenue line is currently the most crowded subway line in New York, even beating out the consistently overwhelmed L line.
Source: New York Times
But alas, the Second Avenue subway is arriving and hopefully it eases the pain of commuting for some New Yorkers. As an added bonus, the new stations feature some beautiful new artwork. The 96th Street station seen here features a beautiful display by Sarah Sze.
Sze created the artwork, called "Blueprint for a Landscape," by applying color and lines to 4,300 porcelain tiles. The deep blue background is punctured with birds, scaffolding, and foliage caught up in the chaos of a whirlwind.
Source: MTA
Each entrance of the 96th Street Station features a different shade of blue. Sze represented the United States in the Venice Biennale in 2013. Her work is also featured in the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and Whitney Museum of American Art.
The 86th Street subway station features artwork by Chuck Close. Close created 12 large-scale portraits based on his own portrait paintings and prints. Close applied different painting techniques to 10 portraits made of mosaic and two made with ceramic tile.
Close chose to portray different cultural figures, like Kara Walker, pictured here, a contemporary artist.
Close was a recipient of a National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Barack Obama's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
The 72nd Street Station showcases the work of Vik Muniz. The artist photographed more than three dozen people to create different "characters" people encounter on the subway.
Source: MTA
Muniz recreated all of his photographs using mosaics.
Muniz is a Brazilian-born artist based in New York City with work featured in the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum.
Lastly, the 63rd Street Station that the Q will pass through got an upgrade and features some artwork by Jean Shin. She created mosaic compositions based on archived photos of the 2nd and 3rd Avenue Elevated train.
Shin, born in Seoul, South Korea, has been commissioned by US General Services Administration and New York City's Percent for Art program
Source: MTA
Overall the MTA budgeted $4.5 million for the artwork out of the $4.4 billion set aside for the Second Avenue subway line expansion. The artists were chosen in 2009 from a pool of over 300 applicants.
Source: New York Times
