Few people along Park Avenue know that some 16 stories beneath their feet crews are working around the clock, chewing through 450 million year old bedrock on their way toward Grand Central Terminal.
Even as the East Side Access bored beneath the F and V train tunnel at 53rd Street -- passing within a dozen feet of the subway tunnel -- “basically no one noticed,” said Edward Kennedy, a tunnel engineer on the MTA project.
The East Side Access project will bring Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal. A couple weeks ago the first tunnel-boring machine reached 48th Street and Park Avenue from its start a mile away at 63rd Street and Second Avenue. To mark the milestone, on Thursday the MTA led a tour of the tunnel. A second boring machine is expected to reach Grand Central in about a month, engineers said.
The East Side Access project is currently budgeted at $7.2 billion and scheduled for completion in early 2015.
Photo by RJ Mickelson/amNY
