Just as the el was of no interest to the First Avenue Association and other Manhattan real estate interests, real estate effectively lost interest in public transit as an engine of development. Good transportation always makes real estate more saleable. By the 1940's, however, real estate developers were coming to believe that good transportation meant good roads, and good access for cars. The First Avenue Association felt that the Second Avenue el only made transportation worse in the area, by obstructing the road. They believed instead that improved car transportation would benefit the area. Clifton Hood explains that "the real estate industry had been perhaps the subway's most important constituency" in the early twentieth century, because the subway made new areas of the city accessible, thus opening them up for development. The subway thus was an engine for real estate growth over the first few decades of the century.

This $951,005,000 program featured twenty-one major extensions of the subway system, including projects as ambitious as a tunnel from Brooklyn to Staten Island. The plan listed these projects in order of priority. The project at the top of the list was the Second Avenue subway line, with branch lines in the Bronx. Curiously, the only proposed new East River crossing into Queens appeared eighteenth on the list, and was not designed to be connected to the Second Avenue line. The price tag attached to the Second Avenue line was $223,060,000; to the Queens river crossing, $166,620,000. Neither project was built. In fact, of all twenty-one proposals, only two relatively small ones were completed. One was the integration of the old LIRR Rockaway Line in outer Queens into the subway system.

The other was the addition of express tracks to the Sixth Avenue subway, between 34th Street and 9th Street. These items were, respectively, the fourth and sixth priorities listed, and were budgeted at $36,480,000 and $19,270,000. Even these two limited projects were not completed for many years. The Rockaway line opened in 1956. The Sixth Avenue express tracks opened in 1967 -- more than two decades after this Board of Transportation budget.

The End of the Great Era of
Rapid Transit Construction
Why was the Second Avenue line -- the very top priority in this budget -- never built? Why, indeed, did subway construction virtually grind to a halt after World War II? The answer is: For the same reasons that the Second Avenue elevated came down.

Post-Unification Second Avenue Plan. 1948. This plan no longer had service to the southern tip of Manhattan or to the far reaches of The Bronx, but instead would have made multiple connections to the BMT for service further downtown and to Brooklyn. A Queens line was added later. The express tracks under 6th Avenue were built, as was a junction including three of the four connections on the Lower East Side, connecting the BMT Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge lines from Brooklyn with the IND Houston St.-Sixth Avenue Line. This junction is now known as the Chrystie Street Connection. The Grand Street Station is the only station of the 2nd Avenue Line ever to open. Large map (31K).

©2001 Alexander Nobler Cohen. ©2001 The Composing Stack Inc. All rights reserved