New York — Crosstown Trolley

Rail Transit Online, June 2005

A proposal to install modern streetcars along Manhattan’s famed 42^nd Street that been in limbo for about a decade appears destined to stay there.  A privately-funded urban plan for 42^nd Street was recently released showing a landscaped pedestrian boulevard with tracks running from river to river.  That prompted a group of architects and planners, dubbed vision42, to try to drum up support for the project, which would cost an estimated $510 million, much of it for utility relocation.  The street is honeycombed with active and abandoned water, sewer, steam, electrical, telephone and data lines.  Also still in place are the old streetcar tracks — the last car ran in 1946 — and the conduits which contained the traction power contacts.  Community support for the proposal appears to be weak, with most transit supporters and politicians focusing instead on generating funding to build the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access and an extension of the No. 7 Flushing line from Times Square to Manhattan’s Westside. 

The idea of streetcars on 42nd Street first surfaced in the mid-1980s, and by early 1992 had generated enough political backing for the city to issue requests for expressions of interest in building the line as a private project.  The Department of Transportation received responses from 13 firms interested in obtaining the franchise for a 2.2-mi. (3.54 km) crosstown line from United Nations Plaza to the Jacob Javits Convention Center.  The tracks would be located on a 21-ft.-wide (6.4 meter) transitway on the south side of the street.  In early 1993, the FTA awarded New York City a $900,000 grant to begin planning work.  The New York city council in June 1994 approved plans for the trolley, the final step needed before the project, with a price tag of $135 million, could be put out to bid.  The council also appropriated $750,000 for an engineering study to verify cost and ridership estimates.  Four consortia were approved to submit bids under a design-build-operate scenario.  The rail line was to be entirely a private sector effort, although the city would provide $60 million for street and utility repairs.  But shortly afterward, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani lost interest, causing a domino effect among other elected officials.  The streetcar proposal languished for several years before finally being shelved.