By GREGORY ZELLER //
That’s a (partial) wrap on the East Side Access project, with engineers completing civil construction of the largest new train terminal built on U.S. soil since the 1950s.
Also billed as the first significant expansion of the Long Island Rail Road in more than century, East Side Access is a Metropolitan Transportation Authority megaproject connecting the LIRR to a new, 350,000-square-foot passenger terminal under Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal – thereby giving LIRR riders two potential Big Apple destinations, including the existing “last stop” at Penn Station.
The new connection is projected to double the railroad’s Manhattan-bound capacity and cut travel time for Queens commuters by as much as 40 round-trip minutes per day. It will be able to accommodate eight trains at a time, and as many as 24 trains per hour at peak times.
With primary construction complete, East Side Access’ grand opening is “on the horizon,” according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, which rejiggered the entire project – first proposed some 50 years ago – in 2018 to ensure “timely completion” by 2022.
It’s been a gargantuan effort. East Side Access has required work in three different boroughs (including the Bronx), eight miles of new tunneling and eight brand-new train tracks; the new terminal – approximately seven city blocks in length, built 140 feet below the lowest level of the two-story Grand Central station – includes 47 escalators, 22 elevators and more than 250,000 square feet of retail space.
A hard hat to follow: Cuomo leads a May 27 tour of the new East Side Access concourse.
Next on the agenda is the electrification of the connection’s third rails, with non-passenger test trains slated to start rolling in this summer. Communications, HVAC and security systems are also expected to get a shakedown in the coming months, before passengers can make use of the shiny new jewel in the MTA’s crown.
But East Side Access is much more than that, according to Cuomo, who said the ambitious, $11 billion project “chang(es) the entire regional transportation system.”
“East Side Access is the biggest transportation project being implemented in North America today,” the governor said at a May 27 ceremony marking the end of the construction phase. “It was an audacious idea … connecting Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Station.”
While it’s still months away from officially opening, simply completing the civil construction is a remarkable achievement, according to the governor, who dubbed the massive depot “a whole city under the city” and likened the megaproject to other large-scale infrastructure efforts in various stages of development around Greater New York, including the rebuilding of LaGuardia Airport in Queens and the construction of the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, connecting Rockland and Westchester counties over the Hudson River.
“This is probably not only the largest (infrastructure project) in the country, but probably the single-most ambitious and the most difficult,” Cuomo added. “Building a bridge is difficult. Building an airport is difficult.
“This was probably the most difficult project to get accomplished.”
