The MTA plans to issue a $186 million contract for a consultant to oversee construction of the Second Avenue subway extension to East Harlem, according to documents published by the agency on Friday.
The consultant group is a joint venture between the companies AECOM and HNTB, two of the largest construction management firms in New York. The agency’s board is slated to approve the deal at its monthly meeting on Wednesday.
The move is the latest step forward for the long-sought subway line, which has been promised by New York officials for a century. The project aims to add three new stations to the Q line, extending it roughly 1.7 miles to East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue from its current terminus at East 96th Street. The MTA estimates the work will cost $7.7 billion, which would make it among the costliest subway extensions ever built on a per-mile basis.
The MTA awarded the project’s first construction contract in December 2023, which covered the relocation of utilities along the subway route. The agency plans to issue three more contracts for work to dig out the subway tunnel and construction the new stations. The consulting group will manage the build, documents show.
Construction on the line was able to move forward after the Federal Transit Administration approved a $3.4 billion grant for the project in November 2023. It's since hit several snags. Work on the project was briefly halted last summer after Gov. Kathy Hochul paused the launch of congestion pricing, its main funding stream. Hochul later allocated $54 million of unused state infrastructure funds to keep the work moving.
The MTA still plans to rely on the money from its congestion pricing tolls — which went live in early January and are now under threat from President Trump — to complete the project, according to transit officials.
Plans for the Second Avenue subway date back to the 1920s. The MTA has since only completed three stations for the line, which opened on the Upper East Side in 2017.
The agency previously started construction on a Second Avenue subway tunnel in East Harlem during the early 1970s, but abandoned the project during the city’s financial crisis. The MTA’s current leaders plan to repurpose that partially-finished tube for the new version of the line.
